Over the past few weeks, it has felt like I have turned my life over to stress. With a draft of my thesis due this week, the continuing frustrations of job-hunting, and the realization that being unemployed means that the holidays this year will require a painful stretching of the already stretched budget, I find myself exhausted, yet tossing and turning, unable to fully rest.

Job hunting accounts for probably 90 percent of my stress. Researching and writing are tasks that I not only can do, but enjoy doing. Finding a job on the other hand is, in a word, awful. Trying to find a job that is enjoyable but still pays enough to justify grad school tuition is, in another word, impossible.

Job hunting is exceptionally stressful due to its utterly dehumanizing nature. I think this is particularly true in New York, where there are TONS of people all vying for a limited number of jobs. When there are thousands of applicants, the applicants are treated like just a number, rather than a person.

The way I see it, there are seven key steps in job hunting.

First, you must sum up all of your accomplishments in an approximately one page resume; any longer than that and you bore the prospective employer. Second, you must construct a cover letter to complement your resume, but again, be sure not to bore the employer with your silly little life experiences. Third, you wait. If by some miracle you are chosen from the thousands of other one-page-people for an interview then, step four, you dress yourself in a suit, remember to pick a "neutral" color so that you look just like everyone else, and be sure to study and prepare answers to the standard interview questions: Why this company? Why this job? What are your greatest strengths/weaknesses? Blah, blah, blah.

Step five, the interview. Interviews are awkward for both potential employer and potential employee. Typically either you click with someone, or you don't. If you don't, brace yourself for a very painful half hour. You spend the interview dancing along a tightrope between bragging, and selling yourself short, between describing yourself as perfect for the job and the company, and blatantly sucking up. Never, under any circumstances, do anything to upset or upstage the interviewer. If the interviewer scoffs at Burkina Faso, the country you called home for a time, asking "Are you sure it's a country?" and being entirely serious, smile, grit your teeth, and explain, again, that it is a nice little country in West Africa. You must have your life boiled down to one to three minute anecdotes, and be prepared for an interviewer to not ask or care about something you may have considered to be your greatest accomplishment.

Also, you know all of those little things that make you human? Your family, friends, joys, fears, etc? The interviewer does not care about that. The interviewer often does not care that your sister is your best friend and you talk to her on a daily basis, or that you have a husband who beats you at Trivial Pursuit and can almost always make you laugh when you've had a rough day, or that you admire and hope to become like your grandmothers, or that you are someone's daughter, someone's best friend, someone who means something to another person, someone who is part of a family, someone who is loved. They will see you as a piece of paper, a time slot, a monkey to dance for them. And you have to be okay with this.

Sixth, you wait again. You send follow up emails, thanking the person for allowing you to dance your monkey dance for them. Depending on the company, this may be the last contact you ever have with them. If you are lucky, sometimes you will get a form email to "Dear Applicant", along with all the other monkeys, er...candidates, they interviewed, telling you that they have chosen the monkey that can disappear into a top hat while twirling a baton. Sometimes they will ask you to come in for a second interview, or a third interview, or will fly you across the country for an interview, so you can go through the same process in a different city. The result is the same either way - you never hear from them again, you get the form email, or if you are very lucky, the job.

Seventh, if you have not gotten the job, you start the whole process over again, feeling like you have lost a little bit of your humanity at every step.

This process makes me feel very small, helpless, and insignificant. I sometimes wish that I could say to the interviewer "Hello. I am a fellow human being. Please don't treat me like a number." But I fear that kills any chances of getting the job. This, in a nutshell, is why job hunting is at the root of my stress. Why I toss and turn, and why writing a 70 page thesis is not that daunting to me.

The holidays are swiftly approaching, and as I make travel arrangements, and think of gift ideas for my family, I can't help but worry about not having a second income. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and instead of visions of turkeys, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce, I am still worrying about resumes, cover letters, and networking.

Thanksgiving, however, is not a time for being stressed, it's not a time for thinking of everything that we want, and everything that we don't have. It is not a time for self-pity and worrying about the things that we have not yet done. Thanksgiving, as its name implies, is a time to be thankful. A time to remember and appreciate what we do have, in spite of all the things we don't.

I may not have a job yet, but I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to work in the past, and thankful for all of the lessons I have learned from these jobs. I may not live in a swanky Park Avenue penthouse, but I am thankful that I live comfortably in my cozy Brooklyn apartment with my husband and puppy. I am thankful that even though I am not working, that my husband has a good job - there are complete households who are unemployed and we are so lucky that is not the case for us right now. I am thankful that we have heat and hot water as the winter comes - every day we see people sleeping in the subway, and yet it is so easy to take for granted that we have a home. I am thankful for the fact that we have food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, when more than 20,000 people die every day because they don't. Even though I toss and turn because of stress sometimes, I am thankful that I get to do it in a warm bed. I am thankful for my education, and that I had the chance to attend graduate school, as I know that the majority of the world's citizens do not even get to attend university, let alone grad school. I am so privileged and yet I take it completely for granted as I pity myself during the job hunting process.

Most importantly, I am thankful for all of those things which are so often not seen by interviewers, and which are not written on my resume, for all that makes me human. I am thankful that I can talk to my sister, my best friend, on a daily basis; for my intelligent, funny husband; for my parents, my grandparents, my wonderful family and loyal friends; for the fact that I am loved, in spite of my flaws. No matter how many dehumanizing interviews I go through, no one can ever take this away from me.

For all that and more, I am thankful.

Unless you live under a rock (or perhaps have been out of the country with no access to interwebs) you are probably aware that there is a proposed bill making its way through the Senate dealing with an issue near-and-dear to Americans: health care.

According to the 2007 Census statistics, there are around 47 million Americans without health insurance. This number is surely much higher now due to the economic downturn and rising unemployment - often losing insurance is an unfortunate side effect of losing a job. Health insurance is not, in my view, a privilege for those worthy enough to receive it, but is a basic human right. It is shameful that in a country as wealthy as America we still have people who cannot go to a doctor, or pay for an operation they may desperately need.

For those of you groaning "Enough! I am sick of hearing about this health care reform bill!", fear not. I believe there is sufficient coverage of the bill without my two cents and, unless you are an aforementioned rock-dweller or interwebs-avoider, I think you'd agree. My primary concern lies not with the bill, but with the high cost of health care in general, which I actually think the bill fails to address anyway.

Whether you favor a donkey or an elephant, you surely have noticed that health care in America is in dire need of reform. We pay more in health care costs than any other developed country - in 2009 alone our health care expenditures are expected to be $2.5 trillion - almost 18% of GDP. And while our wallets are emptier, we are not necessarily healthier for it - our system consistently ranks at the bottom of other developed countries' health care systems in terms of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.

Two recent episodes of "This American Life", one of my favorite NPR shows, address this issue of rising health care costs and attempt to clarify how we have reached an age of six-or-seven figure medical bills. They are truly the most entertaining two hours I have ever listened to about health care and I urge you to download them: they were aired the weeks of October 11 and October 18, 2009. They forced me to take a good look at what my health care actually costs, and evaluate where there may be problems.

Here's a snapshot of the most recent doctor's bill for me, a healthy twenty-something, living in New York City with health insurance:

Doctor's visit: $325

Lab microbiology: $110

Lab microbiology: $110

Lab cytopathology: $90

My total responsibility: $35

My health insurance company's total responsibility: $600

This was a routine 15 minute visit and routine testing. Results: I am 100% normal. And the total cost for someone to tell me this was $635. Preventive care is important so I am not knocking the idea of having regular check-ups, but if I did not have health insurance, I certainly would have foregone this exam.

Now here's an example of a medical bill from a time when I was not as healthy. Last year, I was sick and put on antibiotics. Here's a rough breakdown of the medical costs:

Doctor's visit #1: $200

Lab microbiology: $110

Antibiotics: Unknown actual cost, cost of co-pay $15.00

After visit one, my symptoms returned, which leads to:

Doctor's visit #2: $200

Lab microbiology: $110

Antibiotics: Unknown actual cost, cost of co-pay $15.00

My symptoms then became much, much worse and I developed a high fever. This leads to:

Doctor's visit #3: $200

(Two blood samples)

Lab microbiology: $110

Lab microbiology: $110

C/T Scan: $2,300

Radiology fee: $300

Antibiotics: Unknown actual cost, cost of co-pay $15.00

My total responsibility: $45 in antibiotics, $15 for C/T scan, $30 in doctor's visits

My health insurance company's total responsibility: $3,595

The result? I was allergic to the antibiotics and needed different ones. This was determined after every single test came back negative and I had a phone consultation with my sheepish doctor.

The way our health system is currently set up, doctors are paid more for performing more tests. People who have health insurance, like myself, may undergo a battery of tests merely to "be on the safe side". Some of these tests, while extremely cool (seeing how kidneys function = sweet) are not always necessary. If I did not have health insurance, I certainly would not have agreed to a $2,600 C/T scan, but because my insurance covered most of it, I thought "Ok, the doctor must know what he is doing." This is explained in quite a bit more detail in the first of the This American Life segments.

One more medical bill example from, shall I say, an uninsured member of my family who recently injured his foot pretty badly. There was crying involved, limping, and the foot looked bent at a funny angle.

Doctor's visit: $60

Pain medication (optional): $20

Total cost to me: $80

This visit was far cheaper than a normal family doctor visit, even without insurance...because this particular family member is a dog. We opt to not insure him because he's a healthy little guy and the cost of insurance would currently outweigh his yearly vet bills.

Animal health insurance is a relatively new phenomenon, but in the multi-billion dollar pet industry age of doggy clothing (or "Snuggies"), spa and hotel services for pets, and countless other areas to waste money on, it just makes sense. In the October 18th episode of This American Life, they outlined a question posed to pet owners, a sort of threshold cost of what might they pay to keep their pet alive called a "Stop Treatment" level. In 1997, this threshold cost was around $576. Then in 2007, it was $1451. With people willing to spend so much more on pet healthcare, the pet health insurance industry practically created itself.

During my dog's visit for his injured foot, the vet said that we could do an X-Ray...buuuut she'd "...hate to order a bunch of really expensive and traumatic tests if they're not entirely necessary." Seems reasonable. Not something I am entirely used to from health care. Without pet insurance, I am forced to look at exactly how much each service at the vet costs: a routine visit, a vaccination, an X-Ray. I am much less likely to force my dog to undergo a possibly optional test if I am paying a couple hundred dollars for it.

If my dog's symptoms had not gone away, however, this is where the case for pet insurance comes in. I love my dog and cannot bring myself to identify a "Stop Treatment" level, but I also have student loans and am loath to spend a couple grand on a hurt paw. The pet health insurance system is actually pretty reasonable. The reporter covering pet insurance for This American Life interviewed an economist with the Financial Times asking him about pet health insurance...the economist said that pet health insurance actually gave him hope for our human health insurance debacle. Here's why:

Pet insurance is not tied to pet employment but purchased on the open market. The TAL program likened the logic of employer-provided health insurance to employer-provided groceries. In this system, you would have unemployed people worrying about being able to provide food for themselves, and campaigns dedicated to universal food coverage. Why should an employer take interest in what foods you have? How much you pay for them? And how much food coverage you have? Perhaps you want a few more tomatoes this month because you feel like having some salsa...sorry, that's not covered under your plan. It's asinine. It's become a similar system with human health insurance with employers deciding what your coverage is. With pet insurance, you can purchase as much or as little as you may need. Further, owners do have to pay part of pet surgeries, even with health insurance, meaning that they actually have to think about what the costs are. This system helps to keep costs under control because people are not so far removed from the bills, unlike the system where you pay $20 for a surgery that your health insurance company might pay $20,000 for. With cost control built in, even if you don't have pet insurance you will not go bankrupt because your dog needs to be neutered.

Obviously even this pet health insurance system is not perfect. If we were to implement a pet health insurance system today, our medical costs are so out of control that people could go broke paying even a part of their surgical bills. I just think that the program made an interesting point. Our health care costs have gotten completely out of control. Our current health insurance system does nothing to address this problem, and leaves far too many people uninsured and vulnerable. Perhaps we can learn a lesson from our furry friends.

I often find myself on a soapbox. Being in the realm of academia, this has meant that I am surrounded by others on soapboxes as well. They do not judge me for having strong beliefs, but encourage and support this tendency. "You're so right! More people should care about developing countries! We don't do enough!" And "Of course global warming is a problem! Everyone should make efforts to cut their carbon footprint!" Academics love to pat themselves on the back for having everything all figured out, should-ing all over people, all the while wondering why the real world does not follow their advice. No matter...as long as they take the high road the rest of the world will someday follow. Trouble is, the academic world is just a wee little microcosm and what happens in the real world does not just matter, but defines the world's direction. The view from the academic bubble is quite different from what I see when I venture outside of it.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately because I am soon to be kicked out of academia and forced into this real world. Once my thesis is finished I no longer have an excuse to hang out on campus, or drag my soapbox around with me. It's too heavy to cart around while wearing a suit.

My path to entering the real world is defined by two awful little words: job hunting. The days of being recruited right out of grad school seemed to end with the collapse of the financial system (what perfect timing on my part). Now I must beg...send out resumes, "network", write cover letters, and attend fancy functions where my soapbox(es) must remain hidden away...their discovery would ruin my chances at getting a job. The real world does not much care for soapboxes.

Recently, the job hunt took a fortuitous turn. I was invited to a reception at a prestigious company, to be followed by an interview the next day. My husband, who has some experience in fancy-schmancy events, gave me just one piece of advice "Do NOT say anything controversial." Sounds easy enough. Until, that is, I found myself chatting with an employee who had this to say about the climate-change bill (Waxman-Markey or Boxer-Kerry) going through Congress: (paraphrased) "Oh, with all those Democrats, they'll probably get their stupid way." Gulp. "And climate change...how much do we really know about it?" GULP. GULP. "(Nervous laughter) I'm just going to get some more water..."

Without even both feet out the door of academia, I already miss my soapbox. My poverty and underdevelopment soapbox is fairly uncontroversial. Most people generally agree that poverty is bad. This does not mean that people want to do anything about it, but they typically admire any efforts to alleviate poverty. I can safely discuss my time in Burkina Faso and the response is admiration rather than controversy (or confusion, in this case "Burkina Faso...is that in Asia?" and "Peace Corps...is that like study abroad?"). Climate change, however, is somehow more controversial. Why?

Case in point: this article today outlined how only 57% of people believe that the earth is getting warmer, down from 71% last year. More disturbingly, only 36% of people believe that human activities are causing this change, down from 47% last year. Science indicates otherwise. The earth certainly has natural heating and cooling mechanisms, but countless studies have shown that human behaviors which release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere are speeding up heating.

This is having direct consequences. Ice sheets in the Arctic are shrinking and disappearing. The ice this year has shrunk by 25% from the average size between 1979 and 2000. Rising oceans mean disappearing islands as well. Disappearing islands mean millions of people with no homes. This report describes how by mid-century, we will have around 1 billion refugees and internally displaced people who have lost their homes due to climate change. Billions more will face water shortages, severe weather changes, food shortages, and other life-threatening events...all because of climate change. It is not just a scientific issue, but a moral and humanitarian issue...just as much of a humanitarian issue as poverty, in fact.

The evidence for global warming exists and is mounting, so why is American skepticism increasing? My answer is that I think that with acceptance of global warming as reality comes responsibility. A responsibility that many people do not want or are not ready for. Changing an infrastructure that is built on pollution will not be easy...and certainly not cheap.

In the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", a choice is given to the audience. Here is a whole bunch of gold bars. Lots of them. Tons of money. To spend how you wish. Goooooold baaaaaars. And here is the earth. Which do you choose?

As I walked away from the conversation with the climate-change-doubter, shaking my head, I felt ashamed. I felt like I had chosen the gold bars rather than stick up for the environment. I do need a job, after all. "Do not say anything controversial." My soapbox, which has long withheld all the weight I put on my shoulders, cracked a little at that moment.

Dejected, I walked toward the open bar to switch my drink from water to wine. On my way, however, I was stopped by another employee who I began to chat with. He asked about my interests, and my thesis topic, and my last internship. When I mentioned energy and the environment, in passing, he said "You know, that's really cool. We have a new team dedicated to sustainable energy." I immediately perked up "Really? It's a huge, growing industry! And it's an exciting area for investment, too." He asked me a few questions about renewable energy, a subject he did not know much about, but was interested in, and then said told me that I must interview for this team in addition to the team I was already scheduled for. I beamed and began mentally repairing my soapbox.

I am still very frightened that entering the real world and finding a job, particularly in a job market with very few choices, will force me to choose the gold bars. I do need a job. But I am glad to know that the earth is still on the table.

"Amy, do you have a few minutes to have a meeting?"

Gulp. "Um...sure, no problem! I'll be right there!"

I could almost hear "The Imperial March" as I walked through the corridor. Emails had been circulating for the past two weeks, "budget deficit", "downsizing", "expense reductions". My heart began to pound.

"Please, have a seat."

I sat.

"As you know, the financial crisis has placed an extraordinary burden on our organization and we have been forced to make some difficult decisions..."

"Mm-hmm..." I mumbled.

"Unfortunately, your position..."

It was around this point that I decided to put my filters on. I knew what was coming and in an effort of self-preservation I decided to go completely numb. I decided that I was perfectly fine without hearing the rest of the sentence. I nodded politely, forced my face to register surprise and disappointment, managed to muddle through the apologies, discussions of severance, and make it back to my (former) desk in one piece.

Unfortunately, this meeting was not surprising news. All the warning signs were present: I was hired only six months ago, I work only part-time while attending graduate school full-time, and I had certainly not yet reached a point where I had become indispensable to the organization. The moment I heard about the 10% reduction in staff, I began bracing myself to be part of that 10%. This may sound blase, but I assure you, I love the organization I worked for and will miss it dearly. I am just trying to be reasonable.

I am certainly not the only person who has lost their job in the past several months. The US Department of Labor's non-farm payroll employment statistics indicated that the US economy shed 651,000 jobs in February alone and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.1%. Scary. These statistics may not even reflect how dire the situation actually is, as they do not account for people who moved to part-time positions, people who took a huge step down on the economic ladder, or many domestic workers who are not "on the books". For example, when I lost my job, the woman who cared for my dog during the day also lost a portion of her income, as she was no longer needed because I would be home. This does not show up in labor statistics.

It is not just the United States facing rampant unemployment; around the world the shocks of the economic crisis are being felt in declining levels of employment. The United Kingdom today reported over two million people are unemployed - the largest number in 11 years. As the developed world slows consumption, manufacturing export-based economies like China and India also feel the pressures of unemployment from large-scale layoffs. No country has been immune to the ills of the crisis.

The Economist's report this week on "The Jobs Crisis" lays out what impacts the financial crisis has had thus far on employment worldwide. They say, and I doubt there is much disagreement with this, that "...the job losses are starkest in America, where the recession began." One need only glance a newspaper here in the US to find yet another story of a person who has lost their job. One article talks about executives who went from making upwards of $70,000 per year to just $12 per hour. Another traces the story of a woman who received just one afternoon's notice that she would no longer be receiving her paycheck and health benefits. Horror stories are making the rounds. One former employee tells the story of walking into the office to find their security ID de-activated. This is how their employer chose to inform them of their layoff. These stories make me shudder, and also make me appreciate even more how humanely and generously I was let go.

One story I read (from the same article above) had a profound impact on me. A woman making $165,000 per year for about 20 years was forced to take a job making $10-$15 per hour, just to make ends meet. I feel for this woman. I really do. That is an incredibly difficult transition, especially after 20 years of such an extravagant lifestyle. The article, however, goes on to say that the woman was forced to clear out her retirement portfolio: $17,000. Perhaps this woman was invested with Madoff. Perhaps she had a very risky portfolio. Perhaps I am being too critical to wonder why on earth after 20 years of a six-figure salary she has such little savings. I think this woman's story provides an interesting insight into the root of the problem itself - unsustainable levels of consumption. Living in luxury, living only for the moment, with little thought for the future. This same woman describes how taking this lower paying job has led to "parting ways with some friends because she is no longer in their social stratum," and how this situation has been so difficult that "It has really been even worse than the death of my mother." Wow. Again, I do not know this woman or her history, but to read this was shocking to me. When your life reaches a point that your friends are based on your mutually high incomes and the loss of a loved one is less significant than the loss of a job, then certain priorities seem to me to be out of whack. Again, I do not know her, but she seems to be lacking perspective.

Losing your job is never easy. I can now speak these words with the wisdom of experience. But there is a light at the end of the unemployment tunnel. It is impossible to say how long, or rough, or difficult the journey to the end of the tunnel may be, but it is there. And during such a difficult time, it is even more important to keep priorities in order and to keep perspective on things.

Though the recession does not yet show significant signs of slowing (though, thankfully!, the markets have rallied in recent days and continue to rally today), there are still opportunities for those seeking employment. The same afore-mentioned issue of the Economist describes a "renaissance" for entrepreneurs. Counter-intuitively, some of the barriers to entry for innovators have actually been removed as a result of the economic crisis. The mobile phone industry is similarly enjoying unprecedented growth, as landlines become more and more obsolete, especially in developing countries. The recession could also provide a boost for green technology. This could not have come at a better time (except perhaps 20-30 years ago) as our greenhouse gas emissions need desperately to be curbed. Now, the opportunities for those interested in creating environmentally sustainable energy abound. A silver lining, at last.

For the four and a half million Americans who have lost their jobs since the beginning of the downturn, yours truly included, and for those who only see grey in this silver lining, rest assured that the recession will not last forever, and unemployment will fall again. But in the meantime, try stay positive and keep perspective. Things could always be worse.

I recently changed my email address and was digging through some old emails when I discovered this. It is my "Etude du Milieu" from my first three months in my village in Burkina. It is a bit long, but if you have ever wondered what a small African village is like, this is pretty comprehensive. If you do not have time to read all of it, at least check out the "Demographics/Site Description"...interesting information.

Enjoy!

Etude du Milieu: Saouga

I. Demographics/Site Description

The village of Saouga is located in Oudalan province on the road from Gorom Gorom to Dori. It is 12K south of Gorom, 36K north of Dori, and 306K from Ouagadougou. Transportation (mainly in the form of camions or pick up trucks) to and from Gorom and Dori can be found daily during the dry season, but gets difficult during the rainy season as the road is unpaved and often washes out. Travel costs are 250-500 cfa to Gorom and 1,000-1,500 cfa to Dori.

The population of Saouga is nearly 99% Sonrai people, but there are Peuls and Bela who live on the periphery of the village. Accordingly, the language heard most frequently is Sonrai, but occasionally at the CSPS or the Tuesday marche, one can hear Fulfulde or Tamashek. Slight cultural differences between these people aside, Saouga and its surrounding villages are 100% practicing Muslims. There are 12 mosques in Saouga itself and the two biggest and only fetes are for Ramadan and the fete de Tabaski. These are celebrated in village with prayer, food, and a weeklong village dance called the Gumba. It is mostly just the youth of the village who participate, but nearly everyone attends at least once.

There are no official government representatives in village, but there is a definite hierarchy of power players who determine what happens in village. The delegue and the village imam head up this power structure, followed by the conseille and the twelve responsables from each of the twelve quartiers. While it is primarily the men, elderly men to be specific, who call the shots, there are also two elderly women who are well respected and hold some influence in village. One is the former accoucheuse villageoise and the other is an elder woman with no official title but who is always invited to important meetings to speak on behalf of the women of Saouga.

There are approximately 17 groups in village, ranging from agricultural organizations, to parents of students, to elevage, to credit groups, to groups exclusively for women. Although many of these community groups do not necessarily function, they all have representation in the CVGT (which I have been told will soon be renamed the CD – Comite de Developpement), which is quasi-functional. The CVGT undertakes projects concerning village development, such as the building of the literacy/alphabetization school, as well as a tree planting project started by and in collaboration with an Italian NGO. The CVGT used to lend villageois money for development projects (90% of the cost, while 10% came from the project coordinator) and the money came from a caisse kept in each quartier, but the CVGT president, Yacouba, informed me that lending has effectively stopped due to the fact that each caisse contains only a couple hundred CFA. To call a meeting of the CVGT, or any other organization for that matter, one needs to walk around the village to inform each conseille, the village imam, and the other people considered to be influential in village. For smaller meetings, informing the key people will suffice, but for a larger meeting, Yacouba sends out a “town crier” with a tam-tam on the day of the marche.

II. Community Organization and Infrastructure

Saouga is organized into several family compounds ranging in size from 15-30 people in 3-5 houses per shared courtyard. Typically, one family shares a house while several extended families share a courtyard. Houses are generally made of mud brick with sand floors and wooden roofs.

The man is the head of the household and, in line with Muslim rules, can have up to four wives if he can afford it. Polygamy is, thus, practiced, but infrequently, as many men cannot afford more than one wife. In choosing a wife, the man pays a woman’s family 60,000 CFA as a dowry, which the family then uses to purchase a bed and other furniture to furnish the house for the new couple. A man can choose a wife as young as 10 years old, but most are 12 or older when they get married. Child production starts almost immediately following marriage and girls as young as 14 come to the CSPS for prenatal consultations. The number of children per family varies depending on fertility, but many women give birth right up until menopause. Divorce is also practiced here, but the decision is left to the men. The only rule in divorcing someone is that if the man has not fully paid the dowry to his wife’s family, he must do so before divorcing her.

The family compounds are shared not only with large groups of people, but with any and all animals owned by the family. Courtyards are often overrun with sheep, cows, goats, guinea fowl, roosters, chickens…and their wastes. Most people do not see any problem with this; I have even seen children collecting the larger piles of waste by hand and put them in buckets to use for other purposes. I can only hope they wash their hands afterwards, but I fear that they do not.

Latrines can be found in many family compounds, but most people seem to prefer to “faire les besoins” en brousse. I even saw one woman squatting in the field right next to a latrine, which indicates to me that convenience is not a factor in the decision to forego their use. Many children simply are not allowed to use latrines, and thus must go en brousse as well. There are areas of pathway all over village that are avoided specifically for this reason.

Women of each family collect water at one of the several village pumps. There is one at the school, one for the quartier next to the school, two near the CSPS, two on the other side of town, and potentially even more that I have not yet seen. There is also an Italian NGO currently working on building another pump closer to the edge of town for the people who live en brousse. Water is stored in buckets and bidons, both covered and uncovered, and is consumed with no filtration system. Water from the pumps runs relatively clear when water is more plentiful, but during the dry season, the more scarce the supply, the dirtier it becomes. Water is generally available all year, just much more difficult to find during April through the rainy season. A barrage used for bathing (both animals and humans), laundry, jardinage, and I fear sometimes even drinking water, has already dried up.

Along with infrastructure, I feel it is important to mention the apparent lack of it in the center of the village. There is a large sand pit that fills with water every year, making it impossible to leave or enter Saouga. A small “boat” was used last year, really just a plank of wood which floated people across, but has since been broken, so villageois are unsure of what will happen during this year’s rainy season.

III. Economic Activity

Saouga is, in line with the rest of Burkina, mainly an agricultural community. Several different crops are grown, including millet, the staple of the diet. Herding is also practiced more here than in other areas of the country. Animals are raised and sold at the marche: I have seen mostly sheep, but also goats and cows. There is also a specific season for eggs around April, I have been told. The satellite village of Ouro-hesso also contains many camels, which are quite valuable, but people rarely sell them.

Saouga’s marche is every Tuesday, and one can find both men and women selling various items from dried leaves, to millet, to nattes, to canneries, to gateaux, to calabashes. Many items are seasonal, but bike supplies, clothing, fabric, beads, and even generic medication sold out of cardboard boxes are available year-round.

There are several small village boutiques which sell petrol, sugar, rice, noodles, lamps and some other very basic necessities. Despite the fact that they all sell almost the exact same thing, there is no competition among the owners.

Because of the village’s proximity to Gorom, many people sell their goods at the Thursday Gorom marche. Women often walk all the way there and back in the same day with their goods on their heads. Men ride in on donkey carts to sell their items. Both men and women go nearly every Thursday to purchase food that one cannot find in village.

There are several examples of “petite commerce.” Many women have gardens where they grow lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, and carrots, and sometimes potatoes (although there were no potatoes this year). These items are sold two months out of the year towards the very end of January through the beginning of March. Women do not sell the items at the marche, so to buy them one has to go to the garden. They complain that their reason for not selling items at the marche is that they do not have a French-speaking business partner to do it for them. They also complain that they do not get their seeds on time and thus miss opportunities to grow and sell certain crops (thus the reason for no potatoes). Aside from jardinage, small transactions take place among women at all times, as they often carry around little cherry like items called “jupe-jupes” and sell them for 25 CFA to interested parties. They also sell large sheets that they have sewn patterns onto.

Work and economic activity, like everything else in Burkina, is seasonal. There are large blocks of time when people are not doing much and do not bring in much, if any, income. During December, many men of Saouga leave for the Cote d’Ivoire to do manual labor or to sell second hand clothing and other goods there. Another complaint from both men and women is that work becomes scarce following the rainy season, again because of the inaccessibility created by the large sand pit.

IV. Education

Saouga has one primary school: six buildings, six levels. School fees are 1250 CFA per year per child, and this cost includes one meal per day for the kids, sponsored by PAM (Programme Alimentaire Mondiale). The closest secondary school is in Gorom Gorom, but very few students go onto study there. The numbers of girls and boys in school seem to be even, but only about 20% of the children in Saouga attend school: about 40 children are in the lowest level with numbers declining steadily only 7 students remain in the highest level. I have asked repeatedly why more children are not in school and have been given a wide range of responses with no concrete answers: children are needed to work in the fields, the family can’t afford the 1250 CFA, they don’t want their kids to begin speaking French and become pretentious, if girls go to school it will derail their Muslim teachings and they will start wearing “mini-jupes”…the list goes on and on.

I have spoken with the school director and one female teacher of the 2nd level about doing “Sante avant Tout” activities and they are very interested. There are already health subjects taught in school, but they are eager to try a new approach. I have also brought up the idea of doing a Life Skills camp for some of the French-speaking children in village during their summer break. Critical thinking skills are not taught in the schools, but are vital to both development of the child and community. The Life Skills manual has several activity ideas and I plan on using many of the problem solving and decision making activities, as well as some of my own ideas. The teachers are less eager to do this, as it requires a great deal more work, but I would like to find a village counterpart who can keep the project going in future summers. If it is too close to this summer to plan one for 2007, I would at least like to get one up and running in 2008.

Aside from primary school, there is a village alphabetization center that holds classes from March through April. There are 3 teachers: the Coges president, an educated woman, and Ishiaka who runs a non-functioning savings and credit club. They teach villageois how to read and write in Sonrai. The classes are composed mainly of adults, with one separate class for women (taught by the female teacher), and some teenagers attend also. Classes are free, and people come and go as they please. Approximately 60 people are involved in the school, but at any given time there are likely about 20-30 people in attendance.

A small religious school for young boys is run by a village elder close to the gare. It meets around dusk, though I am not sure how frequently, and I am unaware of how many students go there.

V. Health

General Information and Staff: Saouga’s CSPS is relatively new as it was just built in 2002. There are two buildings: a maternity and a dispensaire, as well as a hangar that is rarely if ever used.

The staff is officially composed of an ICP, Alaye Kabore, (who recently acquired the position when the old ICP left to work in the south, but will also be leaving soon to work in a different Sahelian village before also leaving for the south), and an accoucheuse, Blandine, who works primarily in the maternity. Each of them speak only limited Sonrai, but can usually find a way to communicate to patients without having to call in a translator. Usually it is the COGES president who translates when needed.

There is a gerant in charge of medication distribution, and also a manouevre who is in charge of cleaning the CSPS and disposing of hazardous materials. The manouevre also often helps during Prenatal Consultations (CPNs) because the accoucheuse gets too busy to help everyone. He weighs pregnant women and records their weight and (hopefully) growth in their Blue Carnets.

Aire Sanitaire: The CSPS of Saouga covers a large aire sanitaire of 10,815 people, spread out among 9 satellite villages, the farthest being Touka-Agulanabe at 40K from Saouga. Almost half of the district sanitaire (5,130 people, 47.4%) is located more than 10K from the CSPS. Although this distance does not keep some people from frequenting the CSPS, the rainy season does. The previously described sand pit renders it impossible for some satellite villages to access the CSPS for at least two months out of the year.

Prominent Illnesses: The five most commonly reported illnesses, in order, are: malaria, respiratory infections, skin conditions, digestive conditions, and trauma. There were no cases of guinea worm in 2006, but there were 8 cases of tuberculosis and 1 case of leprosy. HIV/AIDS statistics are unknown because the CSPS does not test for it and many people say that they would not get tested even if the service was offered. The villageois maintain that “AIDS has not yet reached Saouga, it is only in Cote d’Ivoire…”

Services Offered: In accordance with national regulations, the CSPS offers the “Paquet Minimum des Activites (PMA)” including:

la consultation curative, la consultation prenatale (CPNs offered Monday and Tuesday mornings), la consultation infantile, la couverture obstetricale, le planification familiale (PF), les activites du PEV (free vaccinations), les activities de recuperation nutritionelle (Thursday morning nutritional consultations, followed by Friday morning enriched porridge making), nutritional activities done in conjunction with PAM and Unicef.

The services most frequently used are curative consultations: in 2006 there were 1,841 patients who came to the CSPS with general illnesses. The other most frequently used services were: 433 CPNs, 136 PFs, 217 accouchements. The costs, respectively, are: 1300 CFA (consultations), 1200 CFA (CPNs), 500 CFA (PFs), 2500 CFA (accouchements). Nutritional consultations are free, but women who are selected to receive the enriched porridge must pay 100 CFA for the supplemental oil and sugar.

The costs for 2007 are to be very different, as I found out at a recent meeting in Gorom Gorom that explained a new set of fees set on a national level for all CSPS maternity facilities. The new price for a delivery is only 900 CFA and CPNs are now completely free because of governmental subsidies that are to cover 90% of maternity costs. The COGES president and I held door-to-door sensibilizations in both Saouga and the satellite village of Ouro-hesso to inform women of the elimination and reduction of maternity fees. Many women seemed excited and promised to now go to the CSPS more frequently, but several women seemed indifferent. I called a separate meeting of village women to try to understand why so many choose not to go to the CSPS for prenatal care and the response was very surprising. All of the women who gave birth at home claimed that the birth had been a “sudden surprise” and that is why they did not go to the CSPS. They claimed that they felt only a moment of pain and then literally “2 minutes later” the baby just “came out.” One women even said that she gave birth to all 11 of her sons thinking that she had only to use the bathroom. I did not want to call these women liars, but pointed out that birth typically takes several hours and there are several clear indications (like water breaking, contractions) that give sufficient warning that birth is about to take place. Natural warnings should give more than enough time for women to get to the CSPS, particularly for the women of Saouga who are no more than 20 minutes away. The women had no response for this and continued to insist that it was a surprise. *I would very much like to get at the real reason for why women refuse to give birth at the CSPS, but I believe that I will have to find a translator who is not a male first. Even then, the truth might be difficult to find.

The poor frequentation of maternity services is further complicated by the existence of an accoucheuse villageoise. Until the CSPS was built only 5 years ago, women came to her for all things related to pregnancy and childbirth. She still holds a lot of influence with village women and many will consult her before they even think of going to the CSPS. Because of this, there is a bit of a strained relationship between her, the ICP, and the CSPS accoucheuse. She would like to be more involved in CSPS activities, but the staff does not respect her role, nor consider her to be of much importance and thus does not include her. Because she feels excluded, she often advises women not to go to the CSPS and continues to do some prenatal consultations in village. The COGES president and I have gone to discuss this wither her several times, but the one time the ICP accompanied us, he fought with her and she left in mid-conversation. *I would like to find a way to improve relations between these two important influences on women’s health.

Feeble frequentation of the CSPS is not just limited to prenatal care and childbirth. The Microplan for 2007 listed “Faible participation communautaire” as the priority problem to work on. One source of this problem is the existence of traditional healers, which are much less expensive, but can sometimes aggravate a health condition rather than help it. *I heard about a “traditional healer formation” that takes place in Gorom and am actively searching for more information, although nothing has come of this project idea yet.

Another problem is that people claim to have no money to afford health services (no one saves “for a rainy day”, and one man actually laughed when I asked if anyone set aside money for health emergencies). This lack of available funding means that people wait until the last possible minute, until their condition is as bad as they think it could possibly get before finally coming to the CSPS. The best case scenario that results from this is that the services are exorbitantly expensive, but sadly the worst case scenario is often death because they just waited too long. The other volunteers in the region and I have discussed the possibility of setting up a savings and credit club just for pregnant women so that they do not have to rely on their husbands to pay when they are ready to give birth. We would like to collaborate with the CSPS or maternity of each village to perhaps keep a caisse at the health facility to be contributed to and used exclusively by women who will give birth at the maternity. A similar idea of a savings and credit club for health purposes could be implemented at the dispensaire that would be non-exclusive. In a neighboring village, the ICP mentioned that there are several families that have a card that works similarly to a caisse at the CSPS. They give 10,000 CFA to the CSPS to be used only for their family and each time a family member visits, they simply write it on the card. That way they do not have to pay each time they come in, because they have paid in advance. The CSPS also gives them a subsidized rate for paying in advance, so in the long run, health care works out to be cheaper and the 10,000 CFA goes to cover a lot more than it ordinarily would.

The strategy listed in the Microplan to increase frequentation of services at the CSPS is simply “sensibilizations.”

COGES: Although I have referred several times to my COGES president, I am sad to report that the COGES of Saouga is only marginally functional. There are 5 members, all male, and I have only met 4 of them in my 3 months in Saouga. One lives in Saouga, meme, and the rest only come in on marche days from their respective satellite villages. All of the members have held their positions since the COGES formation in 2002 and there has been no talk of a new election. The only activity COGES members are involved in, and even then it is only 4 out of the 5, is the mandatory meeting that takes place the first Tuesday of every month. This meeting is generally just a synopsis by the ICP of the previous month’s activities at the CSPS and adjourns quickly so that members can go to the marche.

Despite the lack of functioning of the COGES as a whole, the president seems to have a strong sense of his role as a liason between the CSPS and the community. He has been very helpful in scheduling the sensibilizations that I have done so far and assures me that he will help with any activities I want to plan in the future. In fact, I work more with the COGES president than with my counterpart because his relationship with the villageois is much more positive.

VI. Perceived Village Needs

Aside from the simple information collection I have already explained, I wanted to find out what villagers themselves thought of as their priority problems (ie: what they might actually be willing to work on). I called a meeting of 30-40 members of the CVGT, several women included, to discuss their perception of their own needs. We brainstormed several areas that are a good place to begin work on secondary projects aside from health sensibilizations.

The number one problem determined by the villagers themselves is the inaccessibility of the village and of health care in general because of the previously mentioned sand pit that fills with water. The next four, in order, are: lack of educational opportunities for children (even the very few kids who make it past the 6th level in Saouga rarely have the means to continue to secondary school in Gorom); the lack of water or difficulty in finding it, especially for people living on the periphery of the village and for everyone in the months right before the rains start; the lack of opportunities for women in terms of commerce; and the lack of credit for village organizations trying to undertake projects.

The villagers came up with several other problems, but these top five give me a good place to start, and at least an idea of what they might be motivated to work on. The number one problem of the large sand pit proves to be something that stunts development in all areas: health, economic activity, etc, so this is what I am hoping to begin to work on.

This week my wedding dress arrived. The best way I can describe the feeling of seeing it and trying it on for the first time: sheer glee. After a moment or two, the glee gave way to pragmatism, and I began the inspection that any female undertakes when trying on an article of clothing. I tend to do this without much ado when trying on jeans or sweaters or everyday items, but for such a momentous purchase I scrutinized. I turned, shifted, stood up straight, slouched, tugged, lifted, and craned my neck to see my dress from every angle. A kind woman in the boutique complimented me on my choice, and I politely smiled and thanked her, and promptly continued about my dress vetting.

I love, cannot emphasize this enough, love my dress. But this did not stop me from criticizing my appearance in it. I cursed my love of fine cheese and wine, harangued myself about my frequent trips to Chelsea for my favorite Mexican food, and damned the falafel stand close to the library that is amazing post-studying. "Why must I love food so much?" I lamented, as I vowed to cut back in the remaining months before the wedding.

This week, in addition to being my "week of the wedding dress", also happens to be a week of fun-filled events hosted by the Action Center to End World Hunger, which is celebrating its official opening this week in Battery Park City. The opening was intentionally scheduled close to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's World Food Day on October 16th, which brings attention to issues of hunger and poverty worldwide. As an NYU student, I am bombarded with emails about events around the city related to my field, so I heard about the Center's opening and registered for a couple events.

The first event happened to be a comedy show. The notion that you have to suffer a bit to do something good for humanity, or that if it is fun it is not philanthropic is completely false. It was a wonderful event - we laughed, socialized, and raised a ton of money to assist hungry and impoverished people around the world. A number of entertainers from Saturday Night Live provided the comedy acts for the night: Seth Meyers, Horatio Sanz, Rachel Dratch, and that guy who does MacGruber...what is his name? Anyway, the main reason I decided to go (aside from the cause) was because Chevy Chase was the headliner. As a child who watched the Griswold family trek across the country, weathering storms, accidental death, and other mishaps, only to arrive at a closed amusement park where a furious Clark punches Wally the Moose in the schnozz approximately 1,452,897 times, seeing Chevy Chase was an event not to be missed. For readers who have never seen this film, it is called National Lampoon's Vacation and it is also not to be missed. Classic.

So we stood in a packed hall and watched the SNL cast, psyching ourselves up for the real humor of Chevy Chase later in the show. After about an hour and a half, he finally took the stage. The crowd went crazy, cheering, whistling, I even heard giggles of anticipation of future laughter. He walked to a podium, removed a few pieces of paper from his jacket, put on a pair of eyeglasses, and began to speak soberly into the microphone. His speech started out with a few statistics about world hunger. Some people, caught off guard, thought it was part of an act and began to laugh and cheer. But Chevy Chase looked up, seemed surprised even, and said "No, no...just listen." He cited a statistic that I have heard and read before, but it is still shocking every time I hear it: 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, earning below $1 a day, unable to properly feed or care for themselves or their family. 1.2 billion. It is a daunting number. Mr. Chase compared this statistic in a way that I had not heard: this is three times the population of America. Imagine every single American living below one dollar a day. Then imagine adding 300 million more Americans. Then 300 million more. It is unfathomable to think of this many people living in such abject poverty, yet it is reality.

Though Chevy Chase eventually did provide the comedy we had come to hear, I have an enormous amount of respect for him for remembering the reason the event took place, and reminding all of us, too. It may not be typical comedian behavior, but it is socially responsible and commendable behavior.

The second Action Center Opening event I attended was a panel discussion with representatives from the UN's World Food Program, Professors from NYU, the Food Bank for New York City and, the person who drew me in to the event, Nicholas Kristof. If you have not read him, his column appears every Sunday and Thursday in the New York Times. He writes eloquently and passionately about current affairs, mainly those taking place in developing countries. His prose transports you to these poverty stricken areas and forces you to look the problems squarely in the face. He introduces you to people who live in conditions that you likely cannot imagine, and makes it impossible for you to just write those problems off as inevitable or too distant to care about.

Because Kristof was the "big name" of the panel discussion, I had to listen to several other speakers before his turn. Unlike the comedy show, however, I found myself not simply waiting for the headliner to come out, but becoming deeply involved with each speaker's presentation. The first person to speak was from the Food Bank for New York City. I know that there are hungry people in New York City; I pass them every day on my way to work, sometimes sit next to them on the subway, and generally avoid eye contact with them at all cost. I feel absolutely horrendous about doing this. I wish there was something I could do, but aside from handing over my carefully packed lunch, or giving them money, I am at a loss. The Food Bank actually does something more productive than both of these things.

The Food Bank recently passed its 25 year mark in the city fighting hunger. This is not a milestone that they are happy about. The representative said that when they began the Food Bank, they had hoped that it would be a simple short-term solution to a hunger problem, but they have continued to exist because there is a desperate need for it. A statistic from 2007 showed that 1.2 million people in New York City relied regularly on the emergency food aid they provide - this is a number that has increased by 24% since 2003, and has likely increased again over just the past year. More people are going hungry than ever before. The cost of food, already high in New York City, has increased by 20% in just a year, but wages have not risen to match. The representative said that we have to do something to address this before the problem becomes a crisis, but policymakers do not seem to pay sufficient attention to the marginalized. They sit next to them in the subway and avoid eye contact...

The Food Bank representative also mentioned a term I had not heard before, but makes a lot of sense: food poverty. It is important to note that hunger, in most cases, is not a result of a shortage of food, but of poverty and inability to access food or provide food for your family. This is a very important distinction, as it lends itself to solutions that may have nothing to do with food.

The next speaker was the former Director of the World Food Program and she spoke about hunger on an international level. She described three "answers" to hunger typically provided by the international community. One is food aid: most of this typically goes to war-torn countries and the US actually does this quite well. However, food aid is really only appropriate in a crisis situation, like a conflict or a natural disaster. Constant food aid can lead to dependency and dimishing incentives to grow their own food, as exemplified by the case of Ethiopia. In accordance with the implications of solution number one, solution number two is basic agricultural development: teaching people how to grow their own food so they do not need to rely on food aid, or on imports. Despite the preeminence of agriculturalist societies, most developing countries are net food importers because subsidies abroad make food from the Western world actually cheaper than their homegrown food. Though developing countries may have a competitive advantage in terms of land, their agricultural infrastructure does not come close to rivaling the West, and this is something that needs to change in the future; all countries must have the power to feed themselves. Solution number three is educating girls and women: 80% of the farmers in Africa are women, and those who spend their days farming do not have time to invest in an education. Developing countries cannot afford to leave more than half of their populations uneducated. Combatting food poverty, and poverty in general, requires investing in education...and not just for the males of the family.

I greatly respect the World Food Program; for all its flaws it does actually manage to get food to some of those who need it. Remember my "The road to the Sahel is paved in good intentions" blog? It has some first hand observations of the impacts of PAM (Programme Alimentaire Mondiale, or World Food Program) on my small village in Burkina Faso. After the panel discussion, I took advantage of the opportunity to talk with the representative about some of my concerns for the future of WFP programs. She had mentioned the importance of food aid, but did not discuss the implications for those reliant on it in the face of the current economic crisis that will certainly have a negative effect on foreign aid. Though food prices have finally begun to drop again from their spike in early 2008, the freezing credit market will still severely limit the availability of funds for poverty alleviation in developing countries. I told her that I agreed that agricultural development is a long-term solution, but in the meantime, what is being done? Does the WFP have a back-up plan when rich country donors slow down their support? She shrugged apologetically. "The only answer I have for you is the same old thing. We need to do more." Though it was not a satisfying answer, to say the least, I do not blame her for this, I only wish there was something more to be done.

After a couple more panelists who were interesting but unremarkable for my purposes, Nicholas Kristof had his turn to speak. I was extremely pleased to find out that his amazing ability to captivate in his writing translates well into his public speaking. He has travelled extensively throughout regions many people have never heard of or could not even imagine if they had heard of. He has spent time in refugee camps in Darfur, witnessed the atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, attempted to liberate teenage prostitutes in Cambodia, and has shared all of these incredible experiences with his loyal following in the West. These experiences also expose him to some of the deepest poverty and extreme hunger cases on the planet, which is why he was speaking at such an event.

Kristof said that through these experiences, he has come to understand that there are "three faces" of hunger and extreme poverty. The first of these, which has haunted me, is that it is expressionless. It literally takes too much energy for people who are dying of hunger to display emotion. They do not smile, they do not laugh, they cannot even cry in pain. He described walking through a refugee camp and children barely batted an eye at the strange white person. I drew a comparison between his description and my own experiences in West Africa. In my time there, I saw many malnourished children, to be sure, with swollen distended bellies, brittle and broken patches of hair, and tiny bony little arms with not an ounce of fat. But in most cases, these children still could not contain their excitement about seeing a foreigner; their eyes would light up as they began to yell "N'sarah!" or "Obroni!" or "Tubaku!" To think of these children not being able to register excitement, or fear, or anything is heartbreaking.

Hearing Mr. Kristof describing the void of emotion reminded me of an experience I had early on in my time in Burkina Faso, an experience that I sometimes wonder if I dreamt or sometimes forget about all together. It was a trip to a hospital for malnourished people in Ouahigouya, one of the larger cities. As callous as this may sound, I try not to think about it much, and it is only when something triggers the memory that I allow myself to remember it. It was a somber, depressing, painful experience. We were led through various wings, and introduced to patients, mainly women with arms that seemed they would snap if they tried to lift themselves. There were also tiny skeletal children laying motionless on beds, hooked up to IVs, staring blankly, seemingly not even noticing us. This was the one place in Burkina where the presence of strangers did not seem to matter. It was a hospital full of, as Mr. Kristof described, the expressionless face of extreme poverty and hunger.

The second face of extreme hunger is filled with skin rashes. This was another thing I noticed at the hospital for the malnourished. When a person is slowly starving to death, their body develops many ailments as their immune system shuts down. The skin rash is one of these ailments.

Mr. Kristof's third characteristic of the face of starvation is that it is female. In an earlier posting, "The Third Gender", I described that in traditional societies, it is always the women and children who eat last. Though they often work the fields to grow the food, harvest the food, and prepare the food, they reap the least amount of benefits from the food. This is why part of the solution to combat hunger worldwide must be to empower women. Though men also starve, women are the most deeply affected by poverty and hunger.

The events of this week were a glaring reminder to me of how crippling extreme poverty can be and how important it is to remember how fortunate I really am. It was a reminder of those three faces, three human faces, that I have seen firsthand, and those three faces that so many people will not look in the eyes. The expressionless face of starvation will never be overjoyed at the arrival of a dress. The face of starvation suffering from horrible skin rashes will never be eager to try on clothing. And the female face of starvation will never stand in front of a mirror in a fancy gown wishing that she had eaten less.

I am not saying that I am not allowed to be ecstatic about my wedding, or that it is not normal for me to stare scrutinizingly at my reflection in my wedding dress. But I must remember to keep all of these things in perspective. While I curse food, others have none to eat, let alone to curse. I know that it is relatively impossible for me to understand their plight, or to empathize in any real way...this is why it is so hard to look these three faces in the eyes. But they must still be considered.

A basic principle of economics dictates that people primarily respond to incentives. Helping others is nice and all, but the question one asks first is "What's in it for me?" This unfortunately explains why so many of the world's problems go unnoticed, unaddressed, and unsolved. There is no fame or fortune to be gained by lending a helping hand to those less fortunate in largely forgotten corners of the world. There is only the warm, fuzzy feeling that you have done something selfless to help fellow man - though, as I have found, sometimes there is not even this feeling to reward your good deed.

Despite the lack of incentives, and in many cases, even disincentives, people still dedicate their lives to the cause of helping others. It is for this reason that I have always had veneration for the non-profit sector. Non-profits go places no one else will, risk their lives in dangerous countries, and deliver food and supplies in harsh conditions, all the while writing grants, begging for donations, and "singing for their own supper", if you will, to ensure that their, largely free, services can continue. They respond not to incentives, but to need. They are an economic enigma.

When I moved to New York to start graduate school, I was immediately drawn to the non-profit world, despite warnings about (very) low pay and long hours. Concerns about paying rent aside, I was thrilled by the idea that I could do something to help humanity while still getting paid (albeit not well). Within a couple of weeks, I had landed a job at a small non-profit working with Liberian refugees in the New York City area.

The first few months were what you might expect at a non-profit. I felt a sense of accomplishment working at such a selfless organization and felt both pride and admiration for our work. I also, as you might expect at a non-profit, performed duties that I had never done before, and was arguably unqualified to perform, simply because they needed to be done and we had no funding to pay a specialist. I took on the role of grant-writer, bookkeeper, human resources department, capacity building consultant, and even mover when the organization needed to relocate. At times, I took on the role of social worker, assisting in providing direct services to refugees (something that could potentially create, yikes, legal troubles) again, simply because it needed to be done and we had no funding to pay someone to do it.

I was alarmed to witness all of the difficulties faced by refugees in America - from issues related to general poverty to deportation notices to a need for basic health care - it is no wonder that high blood pressure was rampant in the community. Seeing everything firsthand proved to me that there was definitely a need for a space like ours to help. It did not take long for me to notice, though, that even though the organization was perceived as needed within the community, we had a very hard time maintaining our ability to operate. The few employees we had were so busy trying to maintain a semblance of infrastructure that it was difficult to focus on the primary purpose of the organization.

Fortunately for both us and the refugee population, we had several collaborating non-profits that used our space to provide free legal assistance, health screenings, food pantry services, and youth activities. These organizations comprised the majority of our programming, providing invaluable help to both us and, more importantly, to the refugee community. Unfortunately, their ability to assist is limited. Their loyalty and obligation lies first with their own organization and any assistance they provide to us is secondary. However, without these collaborators, there is simply no way that we could accomplish what we are trying to. There is neither the manpower, nor the funding. Even with the extra help they provided in terms of programming, it felt at times like a constant struggle just to keep the organization afloat.

This case at our non-profit points to a larger issue in the non-profit world: the need for greater and more tangible collaboration. Every non-profit wants to be original; everyone with an idea wants to be a director. Where's the entrepreneurial spirit in joining up with an existing non-profit when you can just create your own? The problem is that it seems that organizations could be much more efficient if they worked together instead of vying for the title of "Best Non-Profit" in their field. With respect to the organization I worked for, there were several non-profits on the ground already, performing similar tasks, and rather than trying to join up with them, the directors created a brand new organization. I admit, the organization did have an advantage in terms of location; it filled a void left by other non-profits in the area in being directly on-site for the refugees in the neighborhood. However, my novice opinion is that the organization could have been more effective as a branch-off of an existing organization - the location could have been the same, but simply done under a different and recognized name. The countless hours currently devoted to administrative, managerial, financial, and fundraising duties would be the responsibility of a well-established parent organization, allowing the founders to focus on what they were trying to do in the first place - assist refugees.

Without a parent organization and parent staff performing these essential functions, we had to rely on others to do the work that we wanted and claimed to do, because we were simply too busy drowning in paperwork to perform it. My role was to assist in capacity building, developing new programs and finding ways to improve existing ones. Instead, I ended up paying bills, balancing the checkbook, dealing with non-profit legal issues, and desperately seeking funding. I spent the majority of my first few months working on grant proposals to secure operational support, without which, we could not pay the bills, let alone our staff. When (Hallelujah!) funding was secured, I spent the majority of my time drafting and submitting reports to funders, tracking spending, and trying to stay within strict funding guidelines.

It must be noted that flexibility is not typically a characteristic of grants. When you request funding for a specific purpose, funders expect you to spend it only for that specific purpose and to provide documentation proving that you did what you said you were going to. It is not necessarily convenient, but those are the rules, and in order to be a successful non-profit, you have to follow them. Consider the similar situation of getting a loan from a bank (albeit one that you do not pay back) - if you say you are building an ice cream shop and instead use the money to go on a shopping spree for cars or clothes, you will likely not get any more loans. And you will even more likely get into trouble.

I paid close attention to the rigid grant regulations, carefully monitoring every check I wrote for the organization, scouring the bank statements for discrepancies with our grants...It did not take much scouring before I noticed discrepancies.

Thousands of dollars in office supplies, books, office repairs and upgrades, a new phone line...it seemed others were not monitoring the grant monies as closely as I was. I made a point of mentioning "You know that those monies are for *xyz*, not for *abc*, right? We have to be careful about that or they will take away our funding..." And "Hey, maybe this upgrade should wait a while until we have specific funding for it...?" And "If you purchase something that is 'related' to the organization, you have to have a receipt for the funder. And it cannot be a receipt from an unspecified restaurant..." All to no avail. Funds flew out of the organization faster than you can say "Account Overdrawn."

Non-profits are sometimes accused of corruption and mismanagement - not every non-profit is full of bleeding hearts and helping hands. Like any other industry, there are bad apples. One specific study showed that an estimated 13% of non-profit funds go to fraud and embezzlement. These are the donation environments in which our funders operate, so it is no wonder they are strict about their funds. You can imagine my concern about trying to report these numbers to them.

Environment aside, in the case of this organization, I genuinely do not believe that the funds were being embezzled, or used for extravagant purchases unrelated to the organization. I know that the people I worked with badly wanted to help the refugee community we were working in. But it seems the euphoria of receiving so many grants at once led to extremely irresponsible spending. As much as I nagged about "Please be careful about spending!" the words seemed to fall on deaf (or euphoric) ears. The behavior may not have been ill-intentioned, but it will inevitably lead to ill consequences.

This situation might have been avoidable. Though no organization is perfect, there were other non-profits functioning in the area, and even in the specific capacity we attempted. It is wonderful for people with great ideas and willingness to help to be involved in non-profits. But not necessarily to start new ones..."too many cooks in the kitchen" if you will. More specifically, cooks that may have great ideas for meals or great tastes, but not know the intricacies of the kitchen well enough to function effectively. Perhaps collaboration at the start could have potentially offset these current financial troubles. But perhaps not. There is no way to be certain.

What is certain is that if these sorts of behaviors continue, the organization will not survive. As you can likely tell from the past-tense language, I no longer work there. It is obviously in part, but not entirely, due to the messy financial situation. I strongly believe in what they are trying to do, and sincerely hope that they can pull it together, for the sake of the organization. But more importantly, for the sake of the refugee community they are trying to help.

(note: Barka Wusgo is Moore for Thank you very much)

This post is long overdue, but seeing as I am a firm believer in the adage "better late than never" I would still like to get these thoughts out before late turns into never. All of you likely know this by now: I am back! I decided to leave Burkina last summer, and I got back to the good ol' USA last September. My delay in blogging can thus no longer be blamed on the uncertainty of African cyber-postes. So what caused this hiatus if not for a faulty connection? Did I run out of things to write about as soon as I set foot back on American soil? Did I, gasp, unintentionally leave my writing inspiration in a small village of mud-huts, mosques, and tea?

I sincerely hope it is not the last, but somehow my departure from Africa gave me an aversion to blogging. Each time I sit down in front of my computer, ready to log into blogger to "officially" announce my return, I am unable to do it. I think somehow that this announcement makes it too real. It means that I really am back. But I am not sure I am ready to let go of my time in Burkina. Even now, nine months later, it is difficult to get these thoughts out because it feels as though by releasing them, I am releasing Burkina.

So, you might ask, if I'm so unwilling to release it, then why did I leave? What happened to 27 months? I wonder this myself from time to time. I could go on for pages if I were to explain all of the reasons I left. Bureaucracy, inefficiency, futility, humidity...I am only kidding about the last one. It takes much more than humidity to make me waver in my convictions, and surprisingly enough, I actually miss the heat. I longingly remember the intense warmth and brilliance of the relentless African sun, and remember the liberating feeling of not worrying about carrying an umbrella for 10 months straight because the rains only come two months out of the year. I digress. No, it was not humidity; my leaving was a result of factors far more significant than the heat.

Although I have been back for months, I still remember vividly the immediate effects of reverse culture shock. I remember how nice and surprising it was not to hear the constant buzzing of flies, or the whine of a malaria-carrying mosquito in my ear. I remember being overwhelmed by the immaculateness and sterility of all environments, the bursts of flavor in the food, and wondering why people were in such a rush to get where they were going. I remember French sneaking out as I tried to ease back into American conversation, and holding myself back from greeting everyone in sight, as was customary in my village. I also remember the stacks of complicated paperwork associated with a persistent medical condition, a souvenir from Burkina, and thinking that I had filled more papers in one day in the US as the entire year in Burkina. As wonderful as it felt to be back, I desperately missed the simplicity and easygoing nature of life in Burkina.

During my waking hours, as I shivered in air-conditioning, and struggled to come up with words in English, and stories of my time in Africa that would not shock or disgust my family, I missed Burkina and I missed my friends. During my sleeping hours, I went back. Every night my dreams would take me back to my little Sahelian mud-hut, on top of my sand dune, and my neighbor would greet me in Sonrai with a big beaming smile, and all of her adorable, yet filthy, little children would gather in my courtyard and rattle off excitedly in Sonrai. I never learned enough Sonrai to carry on a normal conversation, but we were still able to communicate in a rudimentary way; I always knew that she was pleased to see me, and vice versa. I would travel back to Gorom Gorom, and sit at Banguia with my friends, drinking Biere de Brakina out of a huge glass bottle, and, miraculously, even when it wasn't cold, it always tasted so good. I would sit and drink tea under the shade of a huge tree, playing cards, or just causer-ing (chatting), and when we ran out of things to say, just enjoying the silence that somehow never felt awkward.

Of course all of my Burkina memories are idyllic, because like Joni Mitchell wisely said, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Yes, it obviously takes removal from a situation in order to miss it, but more importantly for me, it took removal to begin to understand it. The poverty that I became so accustomed to is appalling to think about now that I am no longer there. I got used to hearing about and seeing people and children that I knew die from malaria, and meeting child after child after child who could not and would never learn to read, and watching food prepared with the dirtiest fingernails I have ever seen, and then watching people eat it (who am I kidding, I ate it, too). I began to see all of these activities as normal and inevitable. It would still register as sad or frustrating, but the urgency that I used to study these problems with was gone, replaced by a different feeling that I cannot pinpoint. At some points it seemed that this feeling was habituation. At other points, it felt like hopelessness. Overall, however, I think the feeling was a new and disarming sense of understanding.

Living in Burkina gave me a new understanding of the problems faced by developing countries. Not the deep understanding that comes from growing up with and spending a lifetime facing them, and not the understanding of how to fix these problems, but an understanding nonetheless. The urgency that I experienced came from my misconception that there is a quick fix to these problems, and that as soon as I arrived on the continent, I could solve them. I naively and arrogantly thought that because I knew how to cure malaria, how to combat malnutrition, and how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, I had all of the solutions to their problems. I soon realized, as one might expect, that the problems and their solutions are far more complicated than I was able to wrap my mind around from across an ocean. Along with the realization of the complexity and interconnectedness of these problems came the realization that I had absolutely no idea what to do about them.

My shift in thinking went something like this: I knew that malaria was a problem that could be prevented by mosquito nets and could be treated by inexpensive medication. But I did not anticipate that people might not want to sleep under a mosquito net, even a free one, or that malaria does sometimes seem to go away without a strong dose of medication and people might be willing to chance it rather than spend 500 cfa on it. I knew that condoms could prevent HIV. But I did not anticipate that there might be cultural aversions to condoms, or that women could not decide whether or not they wanted to use a condom. I knew that malnutrition could be the result of a lack of food. But I did not anticipate that there might be plenty of food, but not enough of the right kind, and a lack of emphasis of quality versus quantity, or that the order in which people eat, ie: men before children before women, has an influence on malnutrition. I also knew that poverty was at the root of all of these problems...But I did not anticipate the extent to which it ties into and is fed by every single previously mentioned problem. I urgently thought that solutions existed but were just not being implemented, but I found that it is just not that simple.

The understanding that Burkina gave me has stayed with me. Every book and article I read about developing countries, every report, every picture I see, I examine with this new lens. I no longer see things as black and white, with clear cut solutions that are just not being implemented; Burkina taught me that there are nuances to poverty and development that I cannot begin to understand without experiencing them, that there are no panaceas, and that it takes real time and investment to even begin to search for solutions, let alone find them.

I cannot explain how invaluable this lesson is. Leaving Burkina was a sad and difficult choice for me. Not because I did not get to "save my village" as one volunteer used to joke; I know now what a ridiculous concept that is. It was sad because I know that Burkina still had so much to teach me, so many more lessons in store for me. I, sadly, feel as though I got so much more out of this experience than I felt I was able to give.

I am now fully back in the swing of things in the US, living in New York, and seeking lessons of the institutional variety. I am pursuing a Master's Degree in Global Affairs at New York University, specifically studying development. These lessons are a bit more formalized than those I learned in Burkina. But both are still incredibly valuable to me. I seek further education because I know that I need more information, more skills, a sharpening of my analytical abilities, and much more. With these, I am hoping that I will someday be able to give back to Burkina (not to mention other countries like it) even just a small fraction of what it gave to me.

Although I feared that formalizing my return would in some way release Burkina, I now see that I can no more release Burkina than I can unlearn the lessons it taught me, or erase it from my memory. It can never be released, rather it is woven into my history, and through reflection, will continue to shape my outlook on life.

Burkina was both my teacher and my muse for a time. I am eternally grateful.

My first impression of a movie theater in Burkina Faso was in my host village of Rikou. It was a small television hooked up to a car battery and a few rows of wooden benches, set up outside under the hangar of a boutique. Several nights a week, villageois would pile into the hot and sweaty area, cramming as many people onto one bench as they possibly could, and enjoy a Western film dubbed into French. Somehow, it never seemed to matter that people were sitting literally on top of each other, and sometimes on the ground, or that it was often difficult to see the screen due to moths and mosquitos swarming about...it was simply an opportunity to get lost in another time and place while still sitting in a small African village.

It was in this little "movie theater" where I saw my first film in-country: Invasion USA. In the film, Chuck Norris singlehandedly saves the United States from an alien attack. Riveting. At one point during an action scene of the movie, an adolescent boy turned around and excitedly asked us if America was really like this. Where to begin...?

Volunteers, starved for Hollywood entertainment, have come up with their own version of the Burkina Faso movie theater involving laptops and portable DVD players. Sometimes groups of five to ten people will gather around the tiny screen to watch a movie and escape from daily life for a little while.

Several weeks ago I walked into the living room at the hostel and a group of people were watching Back to the Future. I joined the crowd on the couch and, because I have seen the movie so many times, proceeded to zone out and let my mind wander a bit. During Doc and Marty's voyage back to the American West, I began to entertain the thought that there were some interesting similarities between life in Burkina Faso and this snapshot of America in 1855...the dusty unpaved roads, no electricity or running water, the oil lamps, non-motorized transportation, people riding on horses (although here it is donkeys, not horses)...the list goes on and on. It is clearly a stretch to compare Burkina Faso to the Robert Zemeckis version of 1855 America, but I was very surprised at how familiar some of these scenes were. Continuing to let my mind wander in this direction, I was a little amused at the thought that I am able to travel back in time without using the De Lorean time machine, but simply by hopping on a bush taxi and going back to village.

My time travels to village are full of many of these stereotypical aspects of primitive life. Walking through Saouga, there are women cooking in pots sitting directly over fires, people collecting water from pumps or wells, and looking off on the horizon, you can see people bent over working by hand (what tractors?) in the fields they depend on for their livelihood. Entertainment is found in simple activities, like simply sitting around chatting, and during the Fete de Tabaski, the music for the village dance was provided by a man drumming onto an upside down metal bin, accompanied by a whistle.

As the Peace Corps is primarily about cultural exchange, volunteers share many pieces of American culture and technology that may be unfamiliar to Burkinabe. To some Burkinabe from larger cities, our iPods and digital cameras are old news, but to some they are almost frightening. One of my neighbors tells me stories about her village friend who is very curious about the technology that she brought over from the states. She describes how his eyes grow very wide in disbelief at her explanations of various devices. One day, he apparently could not take any more of this and shook his head at some electronic device saying, "Ahh...les Americains. Vous allez nous tuer" (You are going to kill us).

Despite the feeling I sometimes get that I live in 1855, I am often reminded that it is still the 21st century. The same courtyard where I find a woman cooking over a fire might have a man talking on his cell phone. Or on the way into Gorom, a moto will go zipping past women walking with baskets on their heads, or men rolling in on a donkey cart. It is strange to feel like I am simultaneously living in the past and the present.

I recently went on a time traveling excursion even more drastic than the trips back to village, to Dogon Country in Mali. I did not know much about it before I left, aside from the what other volunteers who have visited say about it ("pretty sweet..."), so I was not exactly sure what to expect.

We arrived in Mali around 3 in the afternoon and immediately began hiking to the first village where we spent the night. We hiked alongside a huge cliff that continued, I am told, for more than 150 kilometers. The village at the base of the cliff was not unlike villages in Burkina: people engaging in the same daily activities, speaking in local language, women selling goods carried on their heads, and men sitting in courtyards drinking beer mid-day. Surprisingly, the biggest difference I noticed was that the villagers were so used to tourism that they hardly batted an eye at two white girls wandering through town.

As soon as we looked up, however, we realized that this was not just like the villages that we had grown accustomed to in Burkina. There were houses built, literally, into the side of the cliff. Our guide, Omar, who had grown up in Ennde, one of the villages at the base, took us up into the cliffs to explore the houses, telling us stories as we went. He told us that the villages in the cliffs were built by Dogon people hundreds of years ago. They built their homes into the escarpment as a defense against their enemies. They could see people coming from miles away, and Omar told us that they remained safe launching attacks from their homes on the cliff.

The huts looked just like the ones on the ground, with bedrooms, graineries, cooking areas, and anything else you would need to make a village run. We wandered through the structures, looking at the various paintings on the walls, pottery, and slabs of rock that Omar told us were beds. There was even, yikes, a graveyard built into a cave. Omar told Caitlin about it while I was still wandering through an old hut, and she mischieviously told me to look into the opening without warning me what I would find inside...you can imagine my surprise when I came face to face with a cave full of human skeletons.

It was a whole different world sitting hundreds of feet off of the ground...and it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

It was sort of surreal walking and climbing through houses that were hundreds of years old while carrying digital cameras. And seeing a little old man tending to one of the small gardens about halfway up the cliff, hearing Omar greet him and talk in local language, then hearing Omar speaking in French on a cell phone to one of his friends in a bigger city.

It is a strange and interesting mix of both a modern lifestyle, and traditions that have continued for hundreds of years. And it makes it both easy and impossible to forget that we never left 2007.

"Amy! Amy! Time to get up. People from the bureau are here."

"Huh...?" I roll over groggily, rubbing my eyes. "Not ready to get up yet..."

"Sheila (the Administrative Officer) is downstairs waiting to talk to us. Let's go."

Suddenly I am wide awake. Damn. Last night was not just a bad dream.

Around 3:00 am this morning another volunteer came back from a late night at the bureau, grabbed a towel and headed off to take a shower before finally going to bed. He walked into the bathroom, turned on the light, shut the door behind him...and turned around to find a Burkinabe man hiding behind the door. After the initial shock of seeing something completely unexpected wore off, he began shouting "Voleur! Voleur!" ("Thief! Thief!") and pursued him into the hallway. The shouts woke me up just in time to hear loud footsteps rapidly approaching the area where a large group of volunteers were sleeping.

I lifted my face from being buried in my pillow, confused by all the shouting. The man burst through the door and sprinted right past my bed, with the volunteer close behind, followed immediately by another volunteer that had woken up quickly enough to also start chasing. Without contacts or glasses, I am completely blind, and all I could make out were three figures shouting and running frantically towards the staircase. I thought I had woken up in the middle of some sort of riot. I screamed. Several other people screamed. Chaos ensued.

"What's going on?!"

"Who was that?!"

"Are you okay?!"

Despite only going to bed a couple hours before, we all woke up very quickly. After a moment, the volunteer who chased the Burkinabe came back up the stairs, visibly angry.

"Check your stuff, guys. That was a thief."

I remember thinking to myself that there was no way the thief could have gotten anything from me because my bags were all right next to my bed, where I had been soundly sleeping just minutes before. Nevertheless, I picked up my purse and rifled through it a little just to be sure.

Wait a minute...where is my camera? Damn. And where is my wallet? Damn, Damn. And where is my iPod? Damn, Damn, Damn.

All around me were murmurings of relief at discovering that nothing was taken, or cries of "my iPod is gone!" Or "my money is gone!" Some of us began to wander around to check on people who somehow managed to sleep through the ruckus.

We all convened downstairs, still in our pajamas, and waited to find out what to do next, still a little in shock over what had just happened.

"Someone call Congo (the Safety and Security Officer)."

After a few minutes, we had all settled down and were sitting in our common area, waiting for someone from the embassy to show up. Many of us were even joking around and laughing a little...mostly out of relief.

The security officer sent by the embassy was a short Burkinabe man, dressed in a large yellow raincoat. He asked few questions; he mostly just wandered around shaking his head. When we described how the thief had gone up the stairs to our second floor where people sleep he made a surprised face and said, "ce n'est pas vrai!" (it's not true!) Then we told him how the thief had come into people's rooms while they were sleeping and he again said, "ce n'est pas vrai!" We assured him, yes, sir, "c'est vrai."

Collectively, the thief got away with a large sum of cash, around $1000, both in American dollars and CFA, three iPods, one camera, and some other small electronic devices.

He managed to take something else though...a feeling of security. Volunteers spend so much time here that it is only natural to let your guard down a little and start to consider these surroundings to be like home. But many of the things that he took were close to sleeping volunteers. My purse, for example, was on the floor literally right next to my bed. There were two people sleeping next to an outlet where some electronics were stolen. Items were stolen from bottom bunks of beds when there were two people sleeping on the top bunks. And the volunteer who found the thief had one of my worst nightmares realized...walking into a dark room and finding someone who is not supposed to be there. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. And all of this happened with a guard at the door to our courtyard.

The silver lining in this cloud is that the thief, although bold enough to enter our bedrooms, was not carrying a weapon. He did not attack anyone when he was found, and even though he was backed literally into a corner, he merely ran away.

None of us could go back to sleep after all the excitement, so we stayed up for a while, chatting and trying to unwind. We surmised about what he was going to do with our stolen items, and quipped that he now has a salary for the next several years. Someone jokingly said something that stuck with me regarding how other Burkinabe might look at the incident..."He is like Robin Hood. He robbed from the rich to give to the poor." This is obviously not the case, as we are clearly not the "Prince John" or "Sheriff of Nottingham" type. And in fact, most Burkinabe strongly condemn theft against anyone. Thieves here are not necessarily arrested, but if they are caught, they are beaten if not by the police, then often by other citizens. However, the idea of a Robin Hood type thief gives me a point to consider to put this incident into perspective.

Although by American standards we are living like paupers, it is impossible to deny the fact that in Burkina Faso, even our meager salary makes us very, very rich. This is exemplified by the fact that our conversation eventually turned to how we would go about replacing these stolen items. It is an inconvenience (albeit a large and costly inconvenience)...but it is possible for us to do. Many Burkinabe will never see an iPod or a digital camera. I do not at all condone what the thief did, but I can see how, as the old saying goes, "when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose..."

With that said, though, many Burkinabe who have nothing would never resort to stealing. Crime rates here are very low, especially considering the violent crime rates of some of Burkina's neighboring countries.

Burkina in Moore translates to "Men of Integrity". I find that most Burkinabe uphold this title. Even in the wake of the incident last night, I consider myself very lucky to be in a country where poverty has not destroyed integrity.

More than four months have passed since my last blog. Four months...so much has happened that I am not sure where to begin filling in the huge blank space. Rather than trying, and inevitably failing, to describe everything, I will instead try to condense four months into a game called "Highs & Lows".

The name itself is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case you have never heard of it, you play by choosing the one highest and one lowest point of your day and sharing them. It is not exactly a game of skill...or really necessarily a game at all...it is usually done at summer camps, or with a family around the dinner table, or facilitated by a teacher at the end of the school day. While it may seem a bit elementary, I cannot think of a better way to describe the roller coaster of experiences of the past four months.

Because I still claim to be an optimist, I will start with a high point. At the end of February, I finished my three-month étude and headed off for our month long In-Service Training (IST) armed with project ideas and high expectations for what the next several months had in store for me. I hoped that IST would provide me with insights into how to start a successful project in a small village...However, my high point was immediately followed by a low point when I discovered that IST was, pardon me for being blunt, completely useless. One full week was dedicated to theater training...one week, eight hours a day, dancing around a room and learning how to make different facial expressions. Seeing as how my village neither has nor is interested in starting a theater group, I failed to see how this was relevant to my work. I sought extra guidance from my program director, showing her a specific project that I was interested in starting, and her only advice to me was "Don't bite off more than you can chew..." It seems as though she has no interest in supporting me in anything other than Acting 101.

This low point was, unfortunately, followed by another low point of returning to village. Having finished the only task assigned to me, the étude, I came to the sudden harsh realization that I had: absolutely. nothing. to. do. In a village of my size, there is the big problem of having very few French speakers...meaning a very limited number of people to collaborate on projects with. I continually approach the same few people I am able to communicate with and ask if they would be interested in starting one of the many projects we discussed during the étude period...and I am continually met with shrugs of disinterest. I figured that once I pinpointed the problems to work on with the villagers, they would be eager to start to work on them, but I was sorely mistaken. After my counterpart at the CSPS left Saoga, citing the reason that "Saoga n'est pas interessante..." the already small number of French speakers shrank to literally only a handful. Left with only frustration and, most of all, boredom, I decided to seek out a new high to pull me out of this slump.

My new high point came about through travel. I went on several small trips, starting in the Western region of Burkina to visit volunteers in other villages. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really liked their villages. Although I tend to lose sight of this in the face of frustrations with my own village, I really do enjoy the simplicity of life here, and especially the warmth and friendliness of the people.

Immediately following this high point, I took a trip to Ghana with six of my closest friends here. I was absolutely shocked at how developed it is. Crossing the border was like entering a different world, a world of education, cleanliness, running water, and electricity. I had heard the comparison that Burkina is to Ghana what Ghana is to America, but I did not believe it until I actually saw it...although Ghana is still in Africa, it is drastically different from Burkina. After spending ten days in a big city and beach induced high, I should have anticipated that the next low would be loooow. And it was...

I returned again to find Saoga unchanged and seemingly unreceptive to the idea of change. I assumed my former role as observer at the CSPS, trying to educate or help out where I could, and wondering if the work that I anticipated doing would ever be possible. The unwelcome realization that I am not making any sort of difference in Saoga finally hit me. Baby weighing and vaccination sorties are interesting and all, but they are things that occur with or without me there.

As if this rude awakening was not enough of a low, I received news that sunk me to an even lower low point. Two of my closest friends were going home. Other volunteers provide the only support network we have here, so losing two friends (on the same flight, no less) was a huge blow to morale.

Faced with this new low and knowing that a high point was unlikely to be found in village, I decided to go back to Ghana. The trip was absolutely amazing and was just what I needed to bring me out of the funk of the last low. However, when I left Ghana, I had to say an extremely difficult goodbye that brought me right back to where I was at the beginning of the trip.

Back in Burkina, less than thrilled with the idea of returning to village, I decided to re-evaluate what I was doing and try to figure out how to make these "lows" that I experience in village less low...or better yet, turn them into "highs". The reason I came here in the first place was to, as trite as it sounds, make a difference (or as some might say, to "save my village..."). I remember feeling several high points during staging from working on successful projects, and the rewarding feeling that came from giving a sensibilization to a receptive and participatory audience. It was the wonderful feeling that came from actually feeling useful and being able to do something. I wondered if it would ever be possible for me in Saoga...

In a last ditch effort to figure out what to do, I traveled to another health volunteer's village to get an idea of how her CSPS functioned and what she did there. I was blown away by the differences. There were motivated people working at the CSPS, four nurses in training who were also ready and willing to work, and many villageois who spoke French. I left her village for Ouagadougou to speak with my program director, on a new high, that perhaps I could still do something here after all.

I felt, after seeing villages in other parts of the country, that I could be much more useful, much more productive, and much happier in a different environment. While I struggled to make Saoga both a home and a working environment, it just was not right for me. For these, and many other reasons, I requested a site change. My program director said that I presented a fair case, and after reading the letter explaining my reasons, she said that she was definitely "inclined" to give me a site change..."Howeeeever"...with a new group on its way in, another program director out on maternity leave, and two other site changes in the works, she just could not do it.

It was an all new low for me.

The realization that I am stuck in a village that I do not feel I can do anything in is the lowest point I have experienced in the past four months. All I could think leaving her office was, "Now what?" After a great deal of reflecting and questioning and just plain thinking, I think I have found the answer to this question...but I am not ready to divulge it just yet.

My current plan for this question of "now what?" is to simply take things one day at a time. So far, the plan has been a success. I have had a great time in the past few weeks; traveling, visiting other volunteers' villages, spending time in my own village and preparing for the summer school coming up in August. The pressure and stress I felt from being in village has lifted and I am able enjoy simple moments, laughing with other volunteers, looking out the window on transport, sleeping under the stars, or drinking tea and having "causeries" with villagers.

Living happily in high moments makes it easy to forget about the lows.

It is public knowledge that Burkina Faso is a poor country. It is also no secret that some areas of Burkina are alarmingly even poorer and less developed than others. In the far north, tucked away from the capital city, paved roads, and many natural resources, the Sahel desert region where I live is one such less developed area.

While poverty is rampant everywhere in Burkina, the naturally occuring conditions of the Sahel region make life just that much more difficult. The hot season is hotter, the dry season is drier, and the rainy season brings about more destruction than relief, as the water just sits on top of the sand, causing severe flooding. In terms of planting and harvesting, the land is less arable, meaning that it produces fewer nutritious foods (which I personally hate because it means that I have to travel 50 K to find an apple) and in order to find even enough shrubbery for livestock, herdsmen have to travel deep "en brousse" every day, often traveling for hours with no water.

Perhaps it is because of these difficult circumstances that the Sahel is such an attractive region for foreign aid donors. Signs of international institutions and NGOs can be found everywhere, from the smallest villages, like my own, to the larger city in the region, Gorom Gorom. On the road from Saoga to Gorom, one of the first signs of civilization, after several miles of the endless expanse of desert, is a bright clean white sign put up by the UN to advertise its work here.

In Gorom itself, there is a large field in front of Banguia, the restaurant I go to every time I am in the city, that is filled with huts set up by the UN to house people whose homes were destroyed by the flooding last year. It has been almost a year since the last rains in the Sahel, and people are still living in these huts, constructed from a combination of a straw like substance called secco, and the bright blue tarps bearing the UN logo, which stand out in stark contrast to the muted colors of the rest of the city's housing. I am not sure what will happen to this little UN refugee camp during this year's rapidly approaching rainy season, as most people have reset up their lives in these huts and have made no effort to rebuild their homes.

The UN is not the only international presence here. There is an NGO called Amurt with an office close to the hospital in Gorom. I would be lying if I said I had any idea what they do here. Catholic Relief Services also appears to do work here, as I occasionally see white vans marked with the CRS emblem on the side. Although I am sure they do something helpful, I again would be lying if I said I knew what it was.

Perhaps the reason I am unfamiliar with the work of these organizations is because I am only in Gorom for a short time about once a week. I can provide much more detail about foreign aid drawn by Saoga, which comes mainly from the two biggest influences here, which are Programme Alimentaire Mondiale, PAM (known to you probably as World Food Program) and Unicef. They both work with my CSPS to combat malnutrition in children.

PAM comes once every three months to donate materials to make enriched porridge for children deemed to be malnourished. Every Thursday morning, there are nutritional consultations in the maternity building of the CSPS as part of the procedure to distribute the donated food. The accoucheuse and I weigh and measure infants and pregnant women to determine who is eligible to receive the food. This is one of my favorite activities, because I get to hang out with babies all morning, but it can also be heart wrenching when I see the condition of some of the children and young expectant mothers who clearly do not get enough to eat. What makes this all the more heart breaking is that PAM has very strict guidelines for the distribution of the small amount of porridge: there is only enough for 40 children, 5 pregnant women, and 5 breastfeeding women per three month cycle. Because of the scarcity, the selection criteria indicate that food must only go to severly malnourished children, so babies that barely tip the scale as moderately malnourished are sent home emptyhanded. What further complicates this system is that many women know they will only receive food for a very sick child, so some purposely keep their babies underweight to ensure that they receive the porridge. These same women often do not even give the porridge to their child, but use the entire three month supply in less than a week to feed the rest of their family.

Unicef's program here also focuses on malnutrition, but is implemented very differently. They donate large quantities of a fortified enriched substance made with peanut butter and cocoa called "plumpy nut", which is handed out in 500 calorie ready to eat packets. There is no monitoring system; instructions are to simply hand it out to malnourished kids. We are able to give away a lot more this way, but it is tricky trying to make sure it ends up in the right hands. Because it is very tasty, and because children rank at the bottom of the power hierarchy here, one can often find a grown man munching on a bag of plumpy nut in lieu of giving it to his five year old child.

Other various NGOs have donated items to Saoga over the years; some have been more productive than others. One of the teachers just told me about an Italian NGO that came a few years ago to work with the school. They were here for a day. They brought several boxes of notebooks. The parents of the few kids who were in school were ecstatic because they did not have to buy notebooks for almost two years. Now, however, the notebook supply is dwindling and the NGO is nowhere in sight.

I am not trying to be critical of these foreign aid efforts. The organizations at work here have the best of intentions to help, and fortunately, they often do. All glitches and technical problems aside, they manage to make a difference to some people, as I am sure the woman who correctly administers porridge to her sick child can vouch for. I do not doubt that these organizations have good intentions, I merely wonder about their sustainability. What is going to happen to the bright blue tarps and the people living under them during the rainy season? And what happens if PAM is unable to make their shipment next month?

There is another sort of attempt at foreign aid in my village that you might be more familiar with...me. I did not bring food supplements, nor housing, nor notebooks...it is just me. I have high hopes, and yes, the best of intentions, but no resources to speak of except for two hands and a head overwhelmed with ideas. All I have been able to do thus far is to lend a helping hand at the CSPS and try to teach through sensibilizations - basically just information sharing. I do not doubt the sustainability of what I am doing here, but I do have serious doubts about my effectiveness. I worry that I, too, have become an example of a well-intentioned but ill-executed foreign aid program.

The ideal solution, it would seem, is a sort of balance between these two types of aid. I am here on the ground, trying to figure out what people need, with little to no way of delivering it, while organizations based in the western world have the means to deliver practically anything, but only swoop in every now and then with what people in their offices percieve to be village needs.

By way of example of this, Saoga, while it is very appreciative of the help from PAM and Unicef, does not consider malnutrition to be their biggest development problem. It is not even considered to be the biggest health problem, as malaria kills more people per year than malnutrition, but I digress. The biggest problem related to development, as determined by the villageoise themselves, is the existence of a large sand pit located between the village and the road (I use the term road loosely). Each year during the rainy season, this pit fills with water, rendering it impossible to leave the village for a full two months out of the year. People cannot go to the Gorom marché to sell their goods, they cannot take their animals en brousse, and more importantly, as the CSPS is on the wrong side of this sandpit, the 7000 people in satellite villages have absolutely no access to health care during this time. Peace Corps, knowing about this problem, has declared that it will be mandatory for me to leave my site to collaborate with a volunteer in another part of the country during this time frame, because my site will become simply too dangerous. If there is any sort of emergency, they would have no way to get to me. The road to Gorom also floods every year, so they are planning to evacuate the four other volunteers in the area as well.

Something as simple as paving the sandy and gravelly road to Gorom would be a start, or something even more simple, like a functioning boat could help people get to the CSPS in Saoga, but alas, this region suffers from the same flooding problems every single year with no relief and no solution. With all the organizations at work here, Peace Corps included, why is it that no one has addressed this problem?

I have had many conversations with people of my village to discuss what can be done about their flooding problem. I have vowed that I will do all that I can to help them find a solution and work with them to put it in place, but as of right now, I still do not know what that will be. I do not know how to build a boat, nor do I have the resources to do so. I also worry that merely providing a boat or something similar will perpetuate the unsustainability of foreign aid programs. I have jokingly discussed swimming lessons (even though I myself barely know how) but if someone is sick I doubt they will want to do the backstroke over dirty, sandy rain water. I also do not know if it is possible to fill in a sand pit, or to pave it...? And if so, there is again the question of where the resources will come from. I am wide open to suggestions...

I have found one of the biggest problems of this village, but I am worried that I will be unable to deliver what they need to overcome it. I have good intentions to help here, and I know the rest of the international organizations here do as well, but for the moment, with no resources, I am stuck on the best way to help.

For now, even in stuck mode, I am just trying to pave the road to development with something more concrete (no pun intended) than good intentions.

It is 9:55 am. I am sitting under a hangar at the alphebetization (literacy) center in my village, empty as usual, waiting for villageois to start arriving for the 10 o'clock community meeting, called by my counterpart. So far, it is just me.

10:05 rolls around. I get up and begin looking around for any sign of the people who said they would be attending. The literacy center is close to a pump, so I step out from under the hangar to greet the perpetual crowd of women gathered at the pump,

"Or keeni baani!"

"Aminata! Materkeni!"

They all look at me curiously as if to say "why are you sitting at the alphebitization center all by yourself?" Still no sign of the meeting attendees.

10:15. The six year old daughter of the village accoucheuse, Sabine, skips over and joins me. "Tantie, qu'est ce que tu fais?" I explain that I am waiting to start the meeting to talk about village health and the Microplan for 2007. She nods and says that she will wait with me.

10:30. I have taught a laughing Sabine the song about a "Petite Poisson" that I learned in 8th grade French class. She happily sings and makes the bubbling fish noises that go with the song "gloup! gloup! gloup!" I sing with her, keeping one eye on my watch and one eye on the entrance to the alphebetization center, willing people to show up.

10:45. Sabine and I are joined by a third party. Not someone who is there to take part in the meeting, but her friend Mikhail. Now the three of us are singing the Petite Poisson song. I am silently cursing "l'heure Afrique."

It is now 11:00. My counterpart pops over to see if I am still there. Yep, still waiting. He says that he will come back in a few minutes to see if anyone has shown up. Apparently being on time is not even a priority for the person who is supposed to be running the meeting. I continue to wait.

11:10. Sabine, Mikhail and I have moved on to the "Frere Jacques" song. I am teaching them the english version. They are adorable. I begin to ponder the idea of only inviting children to village meetings.

11:15. A man who appears older than time itself hobbles into the alphebetization center. He is draped in a long buubu and a turban, despite the 100 degree weather, and uses his staff to step up onto the platform where the meeting will be held. He leaves his sheep waiting outside the hangar. It is the village imam. The first person has arrived.

Shortly after the imam's arrival, around 11:30, a group of turbaned men arrive from across the field. Now that one of the village leaders has arrived, men begin showing up in masses. I stand up to shake the hand of every person that walks through the door. Sabine and Mikhail get bored with the talk of goats, sheep, cows, and harvesting that is taking place among the men, so they wave goodbye and skip off. I realize that my counterpart, the person who originally called the meeting, is not there, meaning that I am the only representative from the CSPS there. The men look at me expectantly, "are we going to start anytime soon?"

I realize that I cannot kill time with a group of men by singing a song about fish, so I try to make small talk in whatever limited Sonrai and Fulfulde I can muster. As all they ever really want to talk about are their animals, I find this surprisingly easier than I expected. I breathe a huge sigh of relief when the translator finally walks up.

11:45. My counterpart shows up, no apology or explanation for his tardiness, and the meeting begins. I have asked my counterpart to give me just a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to present myself and my role in village. I explain that I am there to talk about village health problems that I would like to work on, and that I need collaboration from them and cannot do it on my own. I cannot see anyone's expression because their mouths are covered by brightly patterned cloths wrapped around their heads, but I take it as a good sign that they are all nodding and grunting in what I hope is agreement.

It is now noon and stomachs are rumbling over the talking. My counterpart has begun his presentation about the health center's microplan for the new year. He takes the term "micro" too literally I think and begins to go into far more detail than is necessary about CSPS functioning. People are starting to get bored. One man, blatantly not paying attention to the meeting, summons a child to go buy tea.

12:30. Even I am bored. I am no longer sure what my counterpart is talking about. Two men are making tea in the back row and noisily stand up and move around to bring me a glass. I find it slightly amusing that I am not the least bit bothered that they are interrupting the meeting to give me tea.

12:45. People are no longer even pretending to pay attention. The translator has begun to shorten 15 minute speeches in French into one minute bursts in Sonrai. I notice only one man who appears to be concentrating on the meeting, staring intently at his hands. Wait...nevermind. He is not bent over in concentration, but hunched over in a deep sleep.

Around 13:00, I try to motion to my counterpart that it might be time to wrap it up. The men have already long given up on the meeting; some have begun to regather their animals outside the hangar and shake everyone's hand in farewell.

13:15. Meeting over.

Although it is easy to see the humor in the situation a few days removed from it, it can be extraordinarily frustrating when trying to make progress and working in these kinds of conditions. I wish that I could say that the elements of this meeting - namely the lateness and the apathy of participants - are an anomaly, but alas, my counterpart tells me that this is what a typical meeting in village looks like.

I am passionate about my work here, but it would appear following this meeting that the people I am trying to help are much less so. My perceptions from this encounter tell me that people here only begrudgingly attend meetings called for their own benefit, and while I can try my best to get them to attend and try to convince them that it is important, I cannot force people to care about their own problems.

So you might be wondering, why am I presenting meeting minutes if the meeting was seemingly useless? Was anything actually accomplished?

Of course the answer is yes, otherwise I would not be writing about it. All failed experiments at least result in a learning experience.

Lessons learned:

-Meetings in Burkina Faso will never start on time.

-No meeting can start without the imam or other comparable respected male village member.

-Detailed presentations about complex health problems do not translate well in a local language and will put an audience to sleep faster than you can say "paludisme."

I was able to meet up with one of the French-speaking meeting attendees a few days after the meeting to get his thoughts on what went wrong. I asked what he got out of the meeting and he shrugged. "You want to work with us on problems, right?" I eagerly nodded. He said, "All right, then let's have a talk."

We proceeded to talk for more than two hours about Saoga's failure to develop, and what he sees as the sources of problems. There was no set timetable for our discussion, no fancy flip charts, no discussion of "micro" plans, just honest conversation about an old man's worries about his family and his village. I did not say much during our conversation, just listened, occasionally nodding, or asking questions. I learned more in just 15 minutes of this conversation than I had learned in the entire almost three and a half hour block spent at the failed community meeting.

I learned that people are not apathetic about their problems, they are just unsure of what to do about them, where to proceed, and who to turn to for help. While this uncertainty unfortunately lends itself to a so-called failure-to-launch, it does not necessarily mean that they are unwilling to do anything, just that they might lack direction.

I also learned, most importantly, that a community meeting is not necessarily the best way to "launch." This might sound obvious, but people rarely respond well to someone talking at them about their problems (this seems to explain why they do not think it is important to be on time to these meetings) but can provide a lot of insights if they are engaged in a dialogue.

Three and a half hours of checking my watch, singing about petite poisson, and twiddling my thumbs proved to be worthwhile in the end. Because they taught me that discourse might just be the path to productivity.

Peace Corps volunteers are an enigma to the Burkinabe. We carry around big packs all the time not on our heads, but on our backs; we drink water from strange bottles called nalgenes that make the water appear to be multicolored; and we slather ourselves with sunscreen that many Burkinabe think is "whitening cream" (one woman asked me if she could use it so that her skin would be white like mine...I had to explain that it is not to make my skin white, but to prevent it from turning red).

We are indeed a strange sight here...but in the smallest of villages in Burkina Faso, like the one I live in, it is not my appearance that is the most bewildering, but my blurring and even crossing of the extremely rigid gender lines. Gender roles in my village, and many small villages throughout Burkina, have a slight resemblance to the invisible lines drawn at middle school dances. "Girls on one side and boys on the other..."

Women spend their entire day, from the first crowing of the rooster around 4 or 5 am, right up until the moon becomes the only light for miles, at W-O-R-K. They have an endless list of chores and tasks that make me tired just thinking about them. They pound millet for literally hours on end; they prepare all of their family's meals with their faces directly over a fire that chokes me just standing close to it; they scrub their laundry using only their hands, no washboard; they sweep their sand floors hunched over using bundles of straw for a broom; they make countless trips to the pump, filling impossibly heavy bidons of water that they lift and carry effortlessly on their heads; they work in vegetable gardens that they plant and cultivate completely on their own, yet still work in the fields during the larger cultivating and planting season; and they do all of this and so much more when they are pregnant or have a baby strapped to their back and five screaming kids at their side.

Men, on the other hand, have a slightly different daily task list. While their wives (I mean "wives" literally because men in my village can have up to four wives according to the rules of the Koran) are busy running the entire village, men right now are participating in the "repose" season. As I live in a village of herders, some men in village spend the day with their animals off "en brousse" which entails taking the sheep or goats out to find food, then finding shade and relaxing until they are ready to herd them back home in the evening. The rest of the men in village sit under trees or hangars drinking strong green tea and having "causeries": french for "chatting." They salute people who walk past these causeries and in typical African greeting style ask how their day is going, how their animals are doing, how their family is doing (in that order), how they are feeling during this "froid" season, how they slept last night, etc...salutations are the bulk of verbal communication. Occasionally one of the men will doze off and people will continue to talk around him until he wakes up and rejoins the conversation. When they run out of tea, they will send a child to the village boutique to buy more, along with cigarrettes and charcoal to keep the tea hot. They do not seem to notice the women busy at work around them, as they are too deep in conversation, or too deep asleep.

While it is the women who carry the bulk of the family responsibilities and work load, the decision making is left entirely to male members of the family. There is no sort of power struggle between men and women, women are simply expected to be completely subservient to their husbands. They are often promised to men two or three times their age when they are only 12 or 13 years old. One girl in my village is only 10 but already has a husband lined up for the moment she reaches the "procreation age." She had no say in the match.

Women have no say in practically any decision directly affecting their own life or health. When a woman is pregnant or goes into labor, cultural norms dictate that she is not allowed to seek a doctor's or even a village midwife's help without her husband's permission. Because he holds the power to make the decision, husbands often prefer that their wives give birth at home to avoid paying doctor fees. I do not think it is necessary for me to explain what kinds of problems this can lead to...

Coming from a country where women have fought and won against this kind of oppression, I have a hard time being culturally sensitive to this aspect of Burkinabe culture. While I try to tactfully argue with Burkinabe men that women deserve to be given more respect, and indeed have earned respect through their hours of backbreaking labor to keep the village afloat, it is difficult to do so without being offensive. There have been several instances in which I have had to bite my tongue and fight hard against the urge to spew a string of obscenities telling the men what I really think of their attitude towards women.

One such instance occured last week on a visit to a satellite village to distribute medications to combat "filariose" or elephantitis - spread through the same mosquito that spreads malaria. I sat under a tree with a member of the Coges, the local health group that works in conjunction with the CSPS, and placed two, three, or four small white pills based on height in the outstretched hands of people of Ouresso. A large group of women had been waiting patiently, most of them with their children, and they had just gotten to the front of the huddle (there is no concept of a line here) when a group of adolescent boys showed up and shoved their way in front of them. I bristled and said "les femmes etaient ici premierement!" but the Coges member just handed them their medications and said, "en Afrique les hommes sont respectes." The women were completely unfazed by the incident, as they are used to this kind of treatment, but I could not shake this sense of injustice. These same women go back to their houses and prepare food for these boys, clean for them, and take care of every behind-the-scenes aspect of their lives, yet the boys can offer them only the disrespect of cutting in front of them in line.

Being a female volunteer, I was a little concerned about my own treatment, as I would not stand for a Burkinabe man telling me how to go about living my life here, but I now know that I should not have worried. Female volunteers are not treated like the females here, but constitute an elusive "third gender" that fits somewhere between the male and female dichotomy...

Female volunteers are respected by men because of our American status, and can interact with them on the same level as the other men in village - meaning that if I want to sit and "cause" with the sleeping and tea drinking men, which no woman in village would dare do, I can. However, there are slight exceptions to this seeming unconditional respect: very traditional village elders will not even shake my hand because I am a woman, so without trying to be disrespectful, as that will surely get me kicked out of village, I just try not to spend too much time with them. I discovered another exception when I went to mosque for the fete de tabaski: my double X chromosome forbade me from sitting near the men, so they placed me, somewhat symbolically, right in between the group of men praying up front and the women praying behind them.

Right between the two groups in this third gender role seems to be the ideal place to be for me. I am given respect and my opinions hold a great deal of sway, but I am able to use the fact that I am female as a way to try to bridge the gap between men and women in village. Interactions between men and women seem to be very one-sided, as a woman would not dare voice her true opinion to her husband, but women quite bluntly lay out their opinions to me, for which I am extremely grateful. I am able to hear their point of view while at the CSPS during prenatal or nutritional consultations, or even while pounding millet and working in the gardens with the women (okay, okay, so really just working in the gardens and observing the millet pounding...I am terrible at pounding millet) which helps me to better understand women's needs in village and how they are or are not being met. In the very same day, I am able to hear the point of view of the men sitting and drinking tea, and even in some cases, relay information that I have heard from the women.

I am working currently with a man named Ishiaka in my village to try to restart a village savings and credit club. It has been in village for years but has never been fully functional, as you cannot have a savings and credit club with neither savings nor credit. I recently proposed the idea of expanding the club to include women, as many women in village had expressed the desire to engage in small commerce. He sort of mulled this over, and has not yet said yes or no or really anything, except a contemplative nod...but the fact that he did not directly reject it gives me hope.

The attitudes about the inferiority of women have been here much longer than I have, and I know that it will take much more than just me to make any sort of real change for women in Burkina. But perhaps in my village society of "girls on one side and boys on the other..." an intermediary of the third gender variety can start to get people dancing.

When you live in a hut with no electricity, options for passing the time are limited once the sun goes down. My new nightly ritual is to make myself a mug of hot chocolate (yes, even the Wisconsinite is cold during the "winter" nights), take my shortwave radio out to my courtyard, and sit looking up at the stars, listening to NewsHour on the BBC. The night sky in the desert is absolutely amazing, and there is something peaceful and almost symbolic about hearing about wordly events while gazing off into space.

A few nights ago, while partaking in this ritual, Julian Marshall informed me that polar bears have now been added to the list of endangered species. The cause cited: climate change.

Countless studies are published showing that temperatures are rising, warning us of how destructive greenhouse gas emissions are, and cautioning that global warming has the potential to wreak havoc on the earth, but somehow this message always gets brushed off. Often people refer to the overly publicized study about how polar ice caps are actually getting thicker, and these silly environmentalists are just paranoid. Then they go on driving their huge SUVs, confident that their individual actions have no impact on the rest of the world.

The idea of global warming has always sort of been a non-issue for me. While I believed that what we are doing to the earth cannot be good for it, I had a hard time believing that we were actually causing this big huge planet to change temperature so drastically that it would actually affect humans. A turning point for me, was reading an article by the scientist who conducted the study that I mentioned about the thickening of polar ice caps, the study that is frequently cited to show that global warming is not as serious as some scientists say it is. While I do not remember the exact details and do not fully understand the science behind it, I clearly remember the scientist saying that he deeply regretted that his study has been used as an excuse for people who continue to deny that climate change is an issue, even going so far as to say that he himself believes that climate change is happening. Unfortunately, although it had an impact on me, this article did not receive nearly as much publicity as his original research, so people continue to use this "evidence" against environmentalist campaigns to stop global warming.

It is strange for me to think about global warming from here, and to hear scientific reports from the BBC continuing to warn that it is happening, because the whole idea of climate change never comes up in conversation. My village does not seem to really know or care about greenhouse gas emissions...but that is because they do not really emit them.

Energy consumption and CO2 emissions here are drastically lower than those in the US or other parts of the western world. Very few people in my village, including my counterpart, ride motos, which emit CO2, but at a much lower rate than cars, which are a rarity here. If I see a car driving down the road, it is usually a tourist who has rented a car, other than that, it is just the large camions and trucks used for public transportation, which only run once or twice a day, and then only if they are full. And believe me, they have the art of "carpooling" perfected, as most of the time, motos hold at least two people, and they cram hundreds of people in a camion meant to hold only sheep. While they might not be intentionally trying to be energy friendly, they are doing a pretty good job of keeping emission levels down.

My deviation from my usual ramblings about poverty and life in an African village to ramble about climate change does have a reason that is relevant to my life here, so bear with me.

Life in village is entirely dependent on the weather. People depend on the rains to grow their only food supply, and to fill the wells and replenish groundwater for pumping. It rains only two months out of the year during June and July, so if the already short rainy season were made shorter by global warming, people would have no choice but to starve. During the hot seasons in April and May, I have been warned that people are unable to cultivate or do much of anything except search for shade because the sun is so oppressively hot. I cannot even imagine what would happen if the hot season were extended...the country would be unliveable.

It strikes me as horribly unfair that while global warming is occuring because of emissions from the western world, it is here, in Africa, where people would be most affected by it. And what makes things worse is that the western world continues to be so blasé about it, taking for granted that the earth will still be here no matter what we do to it. The US, specifically the current administration, long ago abandoned the Kyoto protocol, and has made no effort to create new regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions. While trying to adhere to the Kyoto protocol would now be unrealistic, the fact that there have been proposals to modify it or at least do something is enfuriating.

Although there is not too terribly much I can do from here to persuade people to consider the problem of climate change and alter their behaviors, I am using my blog as a way to reach out to people who possibly can do something.

We all have to share this little planet, you way across the ocean, and me and everyone else here in Africa, so if we want to stay on it, we have to start taking care of it. I used to love seeing polar bears at the zoo, and while I am sad that they are now endangered because we are melting their natural habitat, I did not write this blog to persuade people to "save the polar bears."

Yes, that's right, I have yet another bleeding heart issue to add to my usual rantings about poverty in Africa. Because I realize that all of these people I am here trying to help will not be here if the world continues to burn up the ozone layer at the scary rate it is going...I will not be here either...No one will.

The month of December has always passed rapidly for me. It is a month that is filled with frenzied shopping trips to buy holiday gifts, preparations for the long haul to visit family, and of course, as a Wisconsinite, it is filled with snow. As I am now living in a country dominated by Muslims in the middle of Africa, the only quality that this December has maintained has been its ability to pass with lightning speed.

It is hard to believe it was almost a month ago, on December 1st, when I was affectated to my new, permanent site in the Sahel desert, in the small village of Saoga. Forget about snow, my new village home furnishes only sand, and shopping trips no longer mean walks through the mall or streets lit by Christmas lights, but walks through various animal stalls of the marché. I am still deliberating with myself over whether or not I am ready for a camel...

They say that time flies when you are having fun, and while time has definitely flown, I would be lying if I said it was because of fun. A new village has brought a whole new set of adjustments...adjustments that I have had to face without the moral support of 30 other American volunteers like myself going through the same ones. As I watched the Peace Corps van drive away several weeks ago, it felt as if I was watching my lifeline to America disappear into the horizon along with it.

Adjustment number one has been trying to overcome the language barrier. I spent hours studying and practicing Fulfulde during training, so upon arrival, I greeted everyone with a big smile and a "Jam nyalli!"...only to discover that my village speaks only Sonrai. My counterpart, the head nurse at the CSPS also does not speak Sonrai, and so I have had to rely on various community members to teach me how to get by in village. Slowly but surely, it is coming along..."keyna, keyna" as the Sonrai people say.

Adjustment number two has been trying to figure out where it is I "fit" in village. This adjustment is a little trickier, and one that cannot be overcome by just sitting through some informal lessons with the village elders. Sometimes I cannot help but take a step back and imagine myself from the outside looking in, and a little ditty from kindergarten class starts to play in my head: "one of these things is not like the other..."

My only concrete understanding about my role in Saoga is that I work in the health sector, in cooperation with the CSPS, encouraging villageois to use its services. This sounds nice on paper, but I have become a little lost in putting it into practice. The Peace Corps overall health program is intentionally vague because it is designed to be self-tailored based on village needs, meaning that I have no boss, no one to answer to, no set plans, no daily schedule. As someone who thrives on planning and swore by my daily planner throughout college, this has been an amazingly large challenge for me.

I spent my first couple of days going through the preliminary stage of wandering around and greeting everyone in Saoga (it is only 2,000 people...did not take long), then quickly got fed up with the lack of direction and decided to create my own program. I sat down and made up a three month calendar for my étude du milieu, to be completed before in-service training in March. After sharing it with my counterpart, who was shocked at the idea of making a week by week plan, I got to work putting things into action.

On second thought, action might be a bit of an overstatement. "Action" really means just more wandering through village, sitting with groups of people and talking, trying to analyze what the main community problems are, and what resources exist to combat them.

Saoga's problems, unfortunately, have not been difficult to find. Most children run around barefoot, amid animal waste and garbage. I see other children off in the fields herding animals, or collecting water, and then walk past the school buildings where, in my opinion, they should be, and see classrooms half full, and where the sixth and highest level has only seven students. Sickness is everywhere, in the form of both malnourished children and adults, respiratory infections from the "cold" (it is technically winter here, but the temperature still does not dip below 85 during the day...I still laugh out loud when I see people in winter coats and scarves), the hacking coughs that come from these infections, or the more serious illnesses like tuberculosis, which is also present in my village.

Searching for problems, I have not had to go too far, but my search for resources available to solve these problems has been much less fruitful.

Everyone I talk to says that they just need money. They need money to pay for the health services at the CSPS, they need money to buy food to feed their families, they need money to buy animals, they need money to fix their huts when they are washed away during the rainy season (because nobody told them that perhaps you should not build your house on sand). Then they say, "But that is why they sent an American here, right? You will bring us money, you will fix the problems."

It seems as though the people of Saoga are as confused about my role as I am. People who do not think that I am here as "Moneybags USA" think that I am a doctor. I cannot fault them, as my time not spent wandering through village is largely spent at the CSPS, helping my counterpart with various tasks there, but I definitely do not see myself as qualified to cure many of the ailments they present me with, and the phrase "No, I am not a doctor, I am here for capacity building in the health sector" does not translate into Sonrai. I occasionally hear random knocks on my door with someone showing me their leg that has "stopped working", or handing me their sick infants, or (and this is my favorite, as I am a very squeamish person) showing me gaping wounds that are clearly infected...all asking me to fix the problems.

I fear that their expectations have been set pretty high...I am here to "fix" these problems. No pressure.

I am overwhelmed, to say the least...struggling with misconceptions about my own role, language barriers that cause any sort of intellectual thought to become lost in translation, and lack of direction telling me where to go from here.

On top of all of this, in a moment of cruel irony, as I was searching for the BBC on my shortwave, the song "I'll be Home for Christmas" made its way through the static...bringing the biggest wave of homesickness I have felt since I got here.

I must confess that after this little Bing Crosby induced pity-party, I started to think about what December usually means for me, and what my life would be like if I was still in America, and even, I am a little ashamed to admit, started to wonder if maybe life in Burkina Faso is not for me. I desperately want to help, but I question my ability to do so. How I am I supposed to single-handedly "fix" all of these problems?

One of the most liberating moments of clarity came when I realized that I am not supposed to single-handedly "fix" all of these problems. Yes, I am here to help, Yes, I will do everything I can to help, but Nooooo, I cannot fix everything and most definitely cannot and should not do it alone.

It may have taken the entire month of December, but somehow I have managed to gain back the perspective that brought me to Burkina in the first place. It is impossible to "fix" all of Burkina's, or even all of Saoga's problems, but there is a genuine opportunity there to help and to fill in where I am able to, and there is no way I can walk away from it.

December may not have had its typical holiday cheer, but it tested me in a way that I have not been tested before, and helped me to know that I can stand up to them. I know that this will not be the last time I am tested here. As this December closes out, taking 2006 with it, I am left wondering what new tests 2007 in Burkina Faso will bring for me.

No matter what happens, what tests I may face, my "thoughts on Africa" will continue to come from "an eternal optimist." I still truly believe that there is a positive difference to be made, and that I can hopefully help to make it.

My new year's resolution will be to simply remember this. Happy New Year.

"wend na lokke..." this is the phrase i have been told to say to the women and children who approach the americans in the streets or in the markets with their hands open, waiting for us to give them money. "god will provide..."

i know how hollow these words sound, even as i apologetically say them. their response is always the same - a nod, and then it is back to whatever they were doing before they spotted the white people.

my skin color alone here carries the connotation that i am somehow extraordinarily rich. we are the americans, the "nasarah", and no matter how much we try to explain that we are volunteers and do not make a lot of money, people still perceive us as wealthy.

requests for handouts were primarily confined to the streets in the bigger cities, where we are relatively anonymous, but in the last few days in our host villages, many volunteers have begun to feel the pressure for handouts from a much closer source. as people in our village realize that we will soon be leaving for our new sites, they are eager to find out what we will leave behind...and all-too-eager to make specific requests. some families have merely asked for clothes, others for electronics, but one family, fully buying into the rich american stereotype, asked a volunteer to help them purchase a moto-pump (used to irrigate a garden or field), which costs almost 2000 american dollars. this may not sound like that much money if you live in america, and it is actually a purchase that would get a lot of good use here...but we earn about $3 per day during training...it would take us the full two years here to buy one.

i do not begrudge any of our host families the right to ask for anything, and i most certainly do not resent them for trying. their requests do not come from an offensive place, just from a genuine belief that we have a lot to give away. it is still difficult, though, to hear them, because i know how difficult it is going to be to overcome the wealthy stereotype, even with burkinabé with whom i have a close working relationship, and that can definitely stunt my progress here.

aside from the work and progress aspect, it is even more difficult to hear these requests on a personal level, as someone who so badly wants to help. how do i make the feeble attempt to explain to my host family that i actually need all of the things in my suitcase for the next two years, knowing that it is more than most of them will own in their lifetime? and how do i look someone in the eye and tell them "god will provide", knowing that they will probably not eat dinner that night?

i cannot help but feel like a total hypocrite. i claim that i am here to help, but then i blatantly deny requests from people who actually need it. in the face of such poverty, i feel a certain obligation to give what i can, and i have a hard time reconciling with myself that i do not have a lot of material possessions to give here, and that i must leave them empty handed. this internal struggle will probably never be fully resolved, and it is one that i am sure i will return to many times in my two years here.

to maintain sanity, i must force myself to be realistic, as difficult as it may be.

i could leave my suitcase with my host family, and neither one of us would be any better off for it. the clothes would be used, until they were worn beyond recognition and became compost. the electronics would be used until the batteries wore out, then they would become just hunks of metal and plasic, used for something unrelated to their original purpose. my books, sadly, would become fuel for cooking fires, as very few people can read, and those who can do not do so in english. the signs of all my stuff would not last longer than a couple of months.

i could similarly start emptying my pockets to all those who ask on the streets. the contents, with my pockets not being as deep as burkinabé think they are, would send them to bed with full stomachs for a few nights, then it would be back to their hand to mouth existence. in the meantime, i would likely be shipped home, as i am pretty sure the peace corps frowns upon volunteers living penniless on the streets of burkina.

for me to think that this kind of a handout is the way to make a positive difference is completely antithetical to everything i have ever complained about with respect to the effectiveness of foreign aid. these contributions, though well-intentioned, would join the countless amounts squandered by organizations that chose to throw money at projects in lieu of actually doing something.

although this kind of rationalization makes sense in my head, it does not make it any easier to shake my head at someone asking for help. i cannot just walk around with blinders on.

this, i hope, is where my work will start to come in to balance out what i will actually leave in my community. i have quoted this tired old proverb before, and it seems fitting to do so again: "give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."

in my host village, the other volunteers and i held a series of community meetings about malnutrition where we taught women recipes for enriched porridge for malnourished children, and the importance of varying one's diet beyond the traditional staples (sounds simple enough, but you would be surprised what was considered to be a well-balanced meal). slowly, but surely, some of these dietary changes have started to take off in village. in meeting with village teens to have an open discussion about AIDS, we were able to dispel a lot of harmful myths about how the virus is and is not transmitted, and the proper ways to protect oneself (two condoms are NOT better than one).

i can only hope that this type of information will long outlast anything that i could leave from my suitcase or pockets. i do not have the resources to give a fancy moto-pump, and i do not have a lot of money...but i have to hope and try to believe that information that can potentially prevent a child from being malnourished, or prevent yet another person from contracting AIDS, will be more valuable.

i cannot stop my heart from aching when i pass an outstretched hand in the street...but i can try to teach things, and implement changes that will keep those little hands healthy, and on a path to self-sufficiency where they will no longer need to rely on handouts.

coming from the "land of plenty" i am used to being able to find anything i want at any time of day. if i want fruits or vegetables that are out of season, my local grocery store will order them from a country that produces year round. if i want clothing designed in europe, someone will manufacture it in taiwan and then make it available to me at a store down the street. when i wanted to buy an ipod, someone in california designed it, then someone in china assembled it before i bought it in wisconsin. anything that i perhaps had trouble finding in the store was available within 4-6 days from sellers all over the world on ebay.

i studied this globilization phenomenon in college, and seeing it through my american lens, i naively thought that the term "global-ization" implies that it is a concept that is applicable to all parts of the world. living in burkina faso, however, has caused me to rethink this.

in my own small village, anything that people need, they make. they do not order food from other countries, or buy clothing and electronics from china in a store; they produce what they need, and, for the most part, if they cannot produce it, they do not have it.

although i have studied subsistence economies, it is so strange to be living in one. breakfast, lunch, and dinner come from the fields, whether that means millet, or vegetables, or even goats, depends on the time of year and on the rain. the neighboring village of youba has a small marché every few days and people can go there to get fruit, seasonally, and things like oil and salt and some very limited amounts of spices (my host family loads piment, an extremely spicy red powder, onto my food because it is one of the only spices available here). clothing also comes from these types of markets, mostly in big, bright, colorful patterned cloths called pagnes that are made into skirts and head wraps for women, and long pants-suit type outfits for men.

one might think that my village is a sort of extreme example because of its small size, but the volunteers staying in other bigger villages report similar experiences...the concept of globalization is not something that has really caught on in burkina faso.

however, as i am sitting in front of an hp computer, while celine dion plays from a radio in the background (groan), with a nokia cell phone in my pocket, in the middle of ouahigouya, i must admit that globalization is not entirely lost on burkina. it is, though, a much less prevalent force, meaning that there are certain things that i took entirely for granted in the states that ceased to exist once i stepped off of the plane.

this idea was reinforced even more on a recent trip to the capitol. some of the volunteers who have been here for over a year told us about a big store called "marina market" in the middle of the city that carries the most products for westerners in the entire country. they are often referred to as "white people stores" by locals. after being in village for a week, walking into this store was like disneyland. there were even other western-looking people, meaning that i was not the focus of attention, or yells of "nasarah!"...i just blended. i wandered down the aisles happily looking at all the european products, breathing a sigh of relief that there was at least one location in the country where i could find things to get me through the next two years.

after a few minutes, however, the american part of my brain that is used to the convenience of a global society kicked back in. as i looked through the soaps and shampoos, it hit me that this is the biggest store in burkina faso...and it has less selection than the teeny walgreens that i used to complain about on campus.

burkina's failure to globalize, (or perhaps, the failure of the rest of the world to globalize burkina) unfortunately, does not just add up to little inconveniences, like not having my favorite shampoo, but can also contribute to already existing problems.

in the health sector, for example, medical equipment is just simply not found here. (mom and dad, i know you can appreciate this reference) in villages, if someone breaks a bone, they are not going to get an x-ray, pregnant women have never even heard of ultrasounds, and the only heart monitoring device for a sick person at the CSPS is a family member sitting on the floor next to their bed.

this also, sadly, translates to something as simple as food. in a subsistence economy, when there is not enough rain, or when something runs out...that's it. last week, the host families of all the volunteers in my village stopped serving bread for a couple of days, and when someone asked about it, the response was, "c'est fini." although bread returned from being "fini" a few days later, it was a rude awakening to me that the village cannot find simple foods for a large part of the year, and unlike most societies, they cannot simply import what they are unable to produce.

from my experience, this failure to globalize is not due to burkina's disinterest in sharing in what is going on in the rest of the world. each time i bring out something from home, my host family is fascinated by it, and eager to learn more about the united states. my host brother marveled at my ipod, and even at my nalgene simply because it bears the label "made in usa." people on the streets, even in big cities, are so happy to see us, and talk to us just because we are from a different country.

the sad and cynical conclusion that must be drawn, then, is that burkina is interested in globalizing, and interested in the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is just not interested in burkina.

burkina is an amazingly beautiful country; its people deserve better than disinterest, and it deserves a place in the global economy. i hope that my cynical conclusion will eventually prove to be wrong.

life typically progresses in a logical sort of cycle. babies are born, they grow, they turn into adults, have their own babies, and thus the cycle continues. i take a certain degree of comfort in understanding this cycle and in knowing that life evolves as it should.

there are times, however, when a person is forced to accept that this life cycle is not necessarily a given, and it is not definitely not promised to anyone. this week was one of those times for me.

life was unfolding in a nice leisurely manner in rikou. it was a sunny afternoon and i was drinking tea with some other volunteers, waiting for the afternoon "repose" to be over so that we could get back to work at the CSPS. we heard the familiar sounds of a moto around the corner and then our language and cultural facilitator, diallo, came strolling into the courtyard and asked to speak to me.

he informed me that he had just come from my quartier and that there had been a death in my host family.

my mind immediately went to the "vieux" (village elder) who lives next door to me. i greet him every morning, and that day he had been lying on a mat, had barely moved to shake my hand, and i had heard him coughing as i left. the death of an elder, although sad, is typically a cause for a party in burkina faso, to celebrate a life well lived.

the "vieux" however, is still alive and kicking (and in much better health, now, by the way), but my baby host brother had died just a half hour ago. i literally felt my heart sink. he was not even a year old. diallo told me that the culturally sensitive thing to do would be to go sit with my family, and i immediately hopped on my bike and followed him back to my quartier.

when we arrived, all the men were sitting somberly under a tree outside of the entryway. diallo sat down with them and told me that i would have to go in on my own because men and women must grieve separately. i was petrified of not having the airbag of a translator, or someone to tell me what to do, or what to say, but i nodded and slowly walked in.

my family's compound was deserted, the wooden containers where women pound millet practically 24 hours a day were knocked over, and the usually bustling courtyards were empty. my host mother came out of one of the courtyards...the first time i have seen her not smiling.

i offered the only phrase in moore that i could think of for the situation, a benediction, a sort of apology, and she nodded and said "amina, amina, barka." (amen, amen, thank you) then led me through the courtyard, into a small room filled with women sitting on mats. there was one mat off to the side, with no women on it, just a small bundle. it was here where my host mother led me, and lifted the edge of the blankets to reveal my little host brother. he looked so peaceful, like he was just sleeping, but he would never wake up again.

i knelt down beside him to pay respects. taking a cue from the women, i was completely silent, but i could not stop the tears from streaming down my face.

it was not until that evening that i learned what had actually happened to him. my host father came into my courtyard to talk with me about "le petit" (the little one). he explained that the baby had been sick for a month, but he had not been to a doctor until that morning, when he began vomiting. the head nurse at the CSPS had written a prescription for some medicine and in some tragically ironic timing, my host father had been 10K away in Ouahigouya picking up the medication when his son had died. i was still unsure of what exactly his ailment had been, so my father brought me the medication to look at. it was a malarial treatment.

"c'était le palu?" i asked incredulously, and he nodded. a completely preventable disease, that had led to senseless death. the only worthless words i managed to choke out were, "il était trop jeune" (he was too young) and my host father again nodded and said "trop, trop jeune."

sadly, infant deaths are not at all uncommon here, and village life returned to normal by later that evening. it was as if the baby had never even been there.

the very next day, the CSPS was abuzz with women bringing load after load of water...a tradition that takes place when a woman is about to give birth. it was a boy...born small, but healthy.

i had the opportunity last night to go to the ceremony to celebrate his birth. the men sat drinking tea, listening to a radio program in moore, while the women again sat clustered in one small room. again, there was one mat sitting aside from the rest, with just one little bundle on it...but this little bundle was moving around contentedly in his sleep.

i went to sit by him, grinning from ear to ear, and before i realized what was happening, a woman was excitedly shoving this newborn baby into my arms. he nestled comfortably, and as i looked into his little sleeping face, i hoped that he would be given more of a chance than the baby that had been buried just two days before.

i realize how painfully cliché it is to talk about the "circle of life" (hello, africa, lion king...cheesy), but i really cannot think of a more fitting phrase. when the life cycle is so tragically altered, and a baby senselessly dies from a treatable condition, you have to keep the idea of a circle of life in mind so that you do not lose all hope.

it is too late for my little host brother, but the circle of life keeps pushing us on, bringing new lives, and new opportunities.

although i am finally starting to get accustomed to my new burkinabé home, it seems that each day brings yet another moment that sends a jolting message to my brain of "holy crap...i am in africa."

for the first couple of days, these moments were characterized by visual stimulation: the kids running barefoot through the streets, the women walking down the side of the road with babies strapped to their backs carrying absolutely enormous loads on their heads, the moto-vélos and bikes zipping through the streets, or the bush taxis jammed packed with people even hanging out the windows and the roof overloaded with what i am sure is much more than the recommended capacity. although there are still moments where i have to give myself a minute to process certain visuals, for the most part, these images are now a part of my daily life.

the next adjustment period of "holy crap" moments dealt with auditory stimulation. in the bigger cities, everyone rattles off phrases in french, greeting everyone they see (or perhaps just greeting us because we are the "nasarah!"- white people- and we stick out just a little bit here). as soon as i began to feel comfortable speaking french, it was off to a small village where i got over more initial shocking moments and became accustomed to hearing moore all day, and even began to feel comfortable with the daily greetings and customary phrases. again, i sometimes need some time to process the language, but its shock value has begun to wear off and hearing peope in my village speaking to me in moore, and even hearing moore coming from my own mouth is no longer a "holy crap" moment.

it seems as though i have stepped into a nice sort of comfort zone, both in burkina faso in general, and in my village. i can now bike through the bigger towns comfortably, waving and greeting as i go, and in my village as i walk past the millet fields, the women at the water pumps, and the rows of housing structures, people wave and shout out greetings to "aminata!" (my village name).

while i am sure that visual and auditory moments will never completely cease to shock me back to the reality that i am really in africa, the latest moments that have given me a serious reality check have been the ones that make me realize why i came to africa in the first place, and what i want my role here to be.

one of these specific moments i am thinking of happened yesterday in my village. the three other volunteers in Rikou and i are in the process of conducting an "étude de milieu", which consists of mapping the community, determining the "calandrier journalier", and creating and filling out a needs-assessment matrix. making the needs assessment matrix is also a three step process - first we brainstorm with the village to discover what they consider to be problems in their community, then we fill out a chart that asks village members to compare each problem, then using this information, we can determine what the village considers to be the main problem by evaluating the chart with them. this is the task that snapped me back to the reality that this is not just an african vacation, but that we actually do have work to do here.

as we prepared to begin the panel discussion, we were all sort of chatting with each other. i recognized almost all of the people we were sitting with - one was the host father of another volunteer, another was a man that i talk with regularly on the way to the CSPS, and the rest were people who i randomly converse with and greet on a daily basis. it did not feel as if we were there to be conducting some sort of important task, it felt just like another community gathering.

then the brainstorming process began. using the african version of a power-point slide show - big sheets of brown paper taped to the wall and fat permanent markers - we listed problems that the community members called out to us.

"nous n'avons pas de l'eau dans la saison séche." "nos enfants n'ont pas assez de nourriture." "le SIDA." "la paludisme." "les femmes n'ont pas les opportunités pour gagner de l'argent." "la pauvreté en général."

(translation: we do not have water during the dry season. our children do not have enough to eat. AIDS. malaria. women do not have opportunities to make money. poverty in general.)

the list continued.

as i wrote down everything they were saying, i had to swallow the lump that was rising in my throat. i have started to think of rikou not as an african village, but as my small village home...although i see these problems every day, most noticably in the children with the swollen bellies from kwashiorkor, it is so different to actually hear it coming from people's mouths, from people who i know and respect.

the village unanimously determined that malnutrition is the biggest problem facing the village. everyone seemed pleased with the activity, and thanked us over and over again for showing them how to conduct it. they said that these kinds of forums really help in starting discourse to address village problems. the needs assessment matrix was a success...

but now what?

we plan to use the information we have gatherered thus far to do a sensibilization in village addressing the problem of malnutrition. i am glad that we are able to do something concrete, and something that the village seems really excited about, but it still seems so surreal to me that i am supposed to have some kind of authority, or some kind of expertise to help people...people who i actually look up to, and people who have taught me more in the past several weeks than i learned in some of my undergrad classes.

this is why the needs assessment matrix was a "holy crap" moment for me. it forced me to remember that i am not just hanging out with my village in burkina faso. i am actually in africa, a region that i studied because big problems exist here, and i need to begin to understand them if i want to ever do anything about them.

although these moments are shocking, and this one in particular was unsettling for me, i hope to have many more of them. they help me to remember what i am doing here in the first place...and they will keep me on my toes so that i can be as effective as i hope to be.

when i applied for the peace corps, this is pretty much how i imagined my job description:

live in an african country. help its citizens.

although this description is technically correct, i am finally starting to learn that there is much more to the job than just living here and making promises to help. now being in burkina faso, i have finally had the opportunity to learn and experience a little bit of what my project is going to be for the next two years.

my official project title is "community health development"...still sounds pretty vague, huh? by way of a brief summary, the peace corps is working in cooperation with the government of burkina faso to implement this big grandiose plan called the "bamako initiative." it was created about 20 years ago in bamako, mali by policy makers from all over the west african region who wanted to improve the quality of life through health care systems. the leaders decided that having just a couple of big hospitals in large cities to care for entire countries was not an effective way to care for members of smaller villages...surprise, surprise...and that the health care system needed a revamping that would include changes on a more local level.

enter: peace corps volunteers.

i will be working, in conjunction with the bamako initiative, in a small village health care center called a CSPS - centre de sante et promotion sociale - and a community group called a COGES elected by citizens to oversee the CSPS and ensure that community needs are being met. we will initiate small changes here and there, and be an informational resource in terms of diseases, nutritional information, maternity care, and basic access to health care.

last week, i had the opportunity to do a preliminary evaluation of the CSPS facility in my village, and to visit a current volunteer at another CSPS in a different part of the country to see how peace corps volunteers work with their community. all i can say following these visits is...yeesh.

upon first glance, the CSPS in my host village looks just like a huge empty warehouse building. upon entering, i found myself with the three other volunteers in my village in the "consultation room" where the head nurse warmly greeted us...smoking a cigarette. i thought that perhaps he just did it in his office, but after about a half hour interview with him about his role in the facility, we began a tour through the different areas and buildings of the CSPS, and he chain smoked the whole time. he weaved his way through patients hooked up to IV poles, and children waiting with other children, and even in the "maternity/birthing room" (which was really just a bed and a sink), cigarette lit the whole time. the sad part of this tour was realizing that this, this warehouse, this health building that doubles as a home for lizards and insects, was one of the well-functioning health facilities.

the CSPS site in the current volunteer's village was more of the same, but, sadly, worse. their facility does not even have a bathroom for patients, (i assume they must just go outside, dragging their IV poles with them) nor does it have any sort of maternity wing. it was just one building, with four or five beds, and another "consultation" room, with some informational posters that most community members are not able to read.

kind of overwhelming. where does one begin in this sort of situation to "help the community members"? i can think of several changes that need to be made in order for this to even be considered a "safe" health facility, but how do you decide, with limited funding, time, and resources, which changes are the most important? which changes are sustainable? and which changes are actually feasible?

what i would absolutely love to be able to do is just a complete overhaul of the village facility. start by building a latrine at the one CSPS site, and continue to make big, exciting changes from there. build a maternity wing, install electricity and running water, and hire educated people to work there to help the limited staff handle their more than 6000 patients. i would make similar changes to the CSPS in my village. this is what i want to do...but it is obviously not possible.

i read somewhere a quote by leonardo da vinci that has stuck with me and helped me to keep my wits about me in this situation: "as you cannot do what you want, want what you can do."

although all of these changes i want to make are not possible, i am in a surprisingly convenient situation to implement some changes that actually are possible.

perhaps instead of trying to build a huge new building, i can help the staff make changes to its existing structures that would help community members even more than electricity, or running water. for example, if the community is educated in how to purify their existing water sources, then they do not have a need for a brand new water source. a big part of the job of peace corps volunteers is designing "sensibilizations" to get important information like this out to the community, in a way that they will understand, and in a way that will make small, but crucial, changes not only possible, but desirable for community members. this is something that i want to do, and it is something that i can do.

there are also opportunities to work with community groups, most often women's groups, but sometimes theater groups or children's groups. we will be able to plan activities to educate people at the village level that CSPS structures exist, and that they are an affordable way to get health care for families. this is something that, sadly, many village members do not know. another small, piecemeal change that obviously will not make a huge impact on all of west africa, or even on all of burkina faso, but a change that will make a difference to the people that i am able to reach through these activities. this again, is something that i want to do, and more importantly, something that i can do.

it is so important for me to keep this perspective in my work here. i must want what i can do. and i promise to do it.

i think it is safe to say that i fell head over heels in love while i was in college. not the kind of love you are probably thinking...this is not that kind of blog...i fell in love with africa.

in spite of its problems, or probably more accurately, because of its problems, i have felt called to africa to make some kind of a difference. i mustered up all the courage i had, decided that, yes, i love africa enough to pack up my life and go there, and made a commitment to move to burkina faso for two years and prove to the continent just how much i love it.

after the first couple of days, i was overwhelmed by just how happy i was with my decision. i really do absolutely love it here. i cannot speak for the whole continent, as i am only in one small country, but burkina faso is amazing. the people are so welcoming, the weather, though hot, is almost always sunny and beautiful, and what the country lacks in money it more than makes up for in diverse and wonderful cultural experiences.

however, as it is in most relationships, my love for africa is being tested. now that the exciting novelty of being in burkina faso has begun to wear off, certain realities are setting in. the reality of the oppressing heat that makes you wish you could just sleep under a tree all day; the reality of sickness, both my encounters of the sickness of people in my village, and my own sickness from the strange new foods; the reality of the poverty that words could not begin to describe; the reality of just how inconvenient it is to not have electricity and to journal only by the light of a lamp at night; the reality that, damn, i really am living in africa.

it appears as if the so-called honeymoon period is over.

it was inevitable, really, because anytime you decide to embark on something big, challenges will arise. i knew that my idealistic love for the continent, studying it and wishing i could help, and longing from afar, could not continue forever, but i have been taken aback by just how many challenges i will face here.

my daily life varies, but right now i am staying in a small village called Rikou with a host family, in a small hut, with no electricity, and dirt walls and flooring that seem to trap heat, making me feel as though i live in an oven. my host family is very kind, and though there is a language barrier, it is wonderful to begin to learn about the burkinabe culture from people who are actually a part of it, and not just sit and read about it from one of my many text books.

the training that i have begun can only be described as intense. i wake up each morning with the sun, because there is really no need for an alarm clock in this kind of heat, i take a bucket bath (no running water, remember?), and bike 10K into the training facility in ouahigouya. i spend all day in training classes learning about what i will doing in the health facilities i will be working with, learning how to adjust to burkinabe culture, or taking language classes learning moore, or learning how to avoid certain diseases, inevitably end up getting at least one or two immunizations - my poor arm is turning black and blue - and then i bike back to my village to eat with my host family, and sit in my courtyard with some of the children for a while until i just crash.

it has been busy and stressful, and my patience with this country has been tested over and over again after only two weeks, but my love for africa has made me stick it out. as with any relationship, once the honeymoon is over, the real work, and the real difficulties begin...but along with the difficulties will come the real substance of this experience. i am glad to be over the initial excitement, and i am now eager to begin to make this *relationship* work.

A note to the reader - my blog will be updated as frequently as possible, but the entries will not necessarily be posted in order, and most likely not posted on the day they were written. Also please forgive any big typos as I am using a crazy keyboard.

A million thoughts are spinning through my head as I sit to write this. There is so muchthat I want to write about, but so little time, as I am sitting at an internet café and my time will run out soon and the different keys on the keyboard are messing with my instincts. In times like these, I suppose it is best to just start at the beginning. For me, the adventure started on the plane. I was sitting enjoying the inflight movie when suddenly the volunteer behind me flipped up my window covering, then grinned and pointed below; the Sahara desert stretched out beneath us. It was then that I realized that I was finally on my way; finally going to Africa. My face remained pressed against the glass,searching below for signs of civilization, but there were none, not a single road. By the time we arrived in Ouagadougou, it was dark, and the only lights below us were the few on the runway and various smatterings of the headlights of the motovélos that zip all overthe city. I will not go into detail about the airport; suffice it to say that it was oneof the most surreal experiences of my life and it involved a test of both my patience indealing with lost items (nothing too serious, just a broken zipper that cost me some cooking supplies, a leatherman, and my nerves) and the first real test of my french. What I learned from this test, was that regardless of language barriers and stress levels and cultural differences, human conditions and experiences translate through something as simple as a smile. I was frazzled, separated from my group, sitting in the office of a man working for the airport, and speaking fragmented french without the airbag of a translator, but I was smiling. Perhaps it was the fact that in my tired state I realized that I had just referred to the pans missing from my luggage as "the bread" (le pain), or perhaps it was nervousness and excitement all rolled into one, but I was smiling from ear to ear...probably looking like an idiot. The man from the airport began his questions gruffly, but after a few minutes, he also cracked a smile and said "tu souris" (you smile) in spite of the predicament and we both agreed that "ce n'est pas le peine" (not a big deal) and continued to discuss what to do. While this was not my ideal way to enter the country, it really helped me to keep things in perspective in the face of problems. Living in a new country, I will most certainly encounter problems, and I have to be ableto say "ce n'est pas le peine" for many things, and continue to remember that a smile will usually bring nothing but good things to a conversation.

The last several weeks have been a whirlwind of lists. "Things to Do" lists, "Things to Buy" lists, "People to call" lists, "Bills to pay" lists, "Subscriptions to cancel" lists...I need a list for all of my lists. A small piece of advice: if you are planning to leave the country for two years, perhaps it would be wise to give yourself more than just a few weeks to prepare.

Regardless of how much stuff there was to take care of before my departure, it is finally done. My bags are packed (and well within the weight limits, thank you), my tickets are bought, and I am ready to go. Now, in my last couple of hours in my hometown that I have not left for longer than a couple of months, things have finally calmed down, and I finally have time to really reflect on what it is that I am about to embark on...and everything that I am leaving behind. Aside from the obvious, like running water, electricity, and - yikes - flushing toilets, there is a vast network of people that I, sadly, do not get to carry with me in my luggage.

In all of the excitement over being able to follow a dream all the way to Africa, my mind has not allowed me to begin to comprehend how much I am going to miss everyone. I can adjust to a life without lightswitches...I am far more worried about adjusting to life without my friends and family. I am leaving behind an amazing family that, in spite of all of their doubts about my decisions, has stood behind me 100%. I am leaving behind the best group of friends that I have ever had in my 22 years of life; they have been an integral second family to me. All of these people have been my support structure...my backbone...my heart. And now I must cope with my heart being in two different places.

Fortunately, I have a small amount of practice in coping with this. With each new thing I learn about Africa, I feel a tug on my heart. Every time I read an article about the problems faced by African people, there's a tug; every time I see a picture from anywhere on the continent, there's a tug; every time I start one of my rants about injustice, tug...my heart is pulled to Africa. Now I finally get to go, and, ironically, I am sure that I will feel the tug in the opposite direction from the people who have come to mean the world to me. But my heart knows that it is time to go.

I have several requests of the important people that I am leaving behind. One: don't forget me! I know two years is a long time, but I will be back! Two: keep in touch! Write me letters, write me emails, send me pictures, whatever. I will do the same for you. Three, and this one is the most important, I will need you to send warm wishes my way, but do NOT wish me luck.

I do not need wishes of luck. Luck is fickle, and luck is fleeting...ask anyone in Vegas. I need wishes for resourcefulness when I discover that I am working with much less that I am used to. I need wishes for open-mindedness when I encounter something new and different that will require a self-adjustment. I need wishes for strength when I start to get homesick and I am missing everyone so much that it hurts. I need wishes for perseverence when I feel as though I can't possibly be making a difference, and I need to keep on going, keep on trying anyway. Luck will not bring me through this experience; these things will.

In all my years of studying French, teachers and professors always wrote "Bonne Courage!" on the blackboard before we began exams, or oral presentations, or rédactions. I always thought it was funny that they never said, "Bonne Chance" (Good luck), because a wish for luck is such a typical precursor to any big event, but now I think I get where they were coming from. When life throws you into a new situation, when you are tested, strength and courage will bring you through it. So if you'd like to wish me something, say "Bonne Courage!"

That is my wish for everyone I am leaving behind. I love you. I will miss you. I will see you all in 27 months. Until then...Bonne Courage.

When I tell people that I am going into the Peace Corps in Africa, on more than one occasion, they have given me a wink and a nudge and said "So, are you going to meet Brad and Angelina?" Yes, that is exactly why I am going - for the celebrity sightings. Sigh.

Brad and Angelina are not the only stars shining a spotlight on the so-called "dark continent" - some big names, including Bono, Madonna, and even Jay-Z have recently devoted time, energy, and all-powerful dollars to support various campaigns across African countries. Celebrities bring a certain "je ne sais quoi" to whatever cause they advocate for - once they have declared an interest, the public usually follows suit, and this has proven true in the case of Africa. People have responded to their favorite stars' newfound benevolence with overwhelming support. A 2003 poll indicated that 72% of Americans strongly favor increasing or maintaining aid to Africa, up from only 48% in 1995.

A recent New York Times Fashion article by Alex Williams, ("Into Africa"), discusses this sudden celebrity inclination toward Africa and its impact on their adorers worldwide. Tourism in Africa is up, levels of issue awareness are up, and fundraising projects are happening even in the smallest of American cities. The trend has caught on in Madison, too, it seems; while thumbing through a Wisconsin State Journal, I was pleasantly surprised to see an article featuring a 15 year old girl and her father who gathered supplies for an orphanage in Kenya and then traveled there to distribute them. Whether or not they were influenced by celebrities, as Mr. Williams so eloquently put it, "...Africa — rife with disease, famine, poverty and civil war — is suddenly 'hot.'"

The optimist in me is ecstatic that high profile people have finally come around to bring attention to Africa, an area in desperate need of attention. At the same time, the skeptic in me questions how helpful the attention will be. Support for the continent is great, but is the support sustainable? Or will the support fade among fairweather Americans, like Michael Musto predicts, "as merely the cause-of-the-moment"?

Just as important as the movement's sustainability is how effective it is for improving conditions in Africa. Some may argue that it doesn't matter why people are contributing, just as long as they continue to do so. After all, in a continent where the majority of its citizens live on a pitifully meager income, every dollar counts...Or does it?

Paul Theroux (who, I would like to add, is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer), mentioned briefly in the above article, lends a critical voice to this Hollywood inspired movement in a piece called "The Rock Star's Burden." Theroux advocates, as many development economists do, for empowerment of African citizens, and homegrown change - not for "Dumping more money in the same old way..." He offers a scathing criticism of foreign aid programs, especially those begun by millionaire celebrities, and argues that it doesn't matter how much money is given if no thought is given to the idea that African countries must begin to strive for self-sufficiency. He chides, "...the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help -- not to mention celebrities and charity concerts -- is a destructive and misleading conceit."

I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place with these arguments. I can't help but roll my eyes at people who follow celebrities anywhere, even to Africa, but I am not entirely convinced that all of these celebrity sponsored foreign aid programs are doing more harm than good. I think one big exception to the overarching "patronizing" stereotype of foreign aid organizations is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which I see as having a lot of potential to help the continent. An organization that promises aid through treatment of diseases that plague Africa, through educating and empowering citizens, and through the building of infrastructure that will last even after the Americans go home, is, in my opinion, well deserving of every second of positive attention it gets.

The difficulty is where to draw the line between empowering and creating dependency. African countries must come to a point where they are no longer reliant on foreign aid money. According to an old proverb, "If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime." What I mean is that I do somewhat agree with Theroux in that we must stop simply giving handouts, and start doing something that will help Africans help themselves. For example, as Theroux suggests, rather than continuing to send educated Americans to teach in Africa, start training Africans to teach in Africa.

Capacity building programs like these take patience, but patience will ultimately pay off if it leads to even one village that becomes self-sufficient. However, patience is unfortunately not a virtue most Hollywood obsessed people pride themselves on. The problem with the current celebrity hype in Africa is not that it is calling attention to the problems of the continent, but that it is bringing the kind of attention that creates a race to see who can donate the most into these "money dumping" programs, precisely the kind that Theroux so emphatically denounces.

In a few years, the glitterati will likely find a new focus, and their short attention spanned fans will no doubt follow. All of the dollars hurriedly thrown at Africa, the grandiose promises of even more financial resources, and the celebrities' reservations for suites at Africa's five star resorts will be long gone...I question whether there will be any sign of them left on the continent. While I would like to be able to say in a few years that the popularity generated by stars left a positive, lasting impact, in this case, I don't think that would be optimistic, I think it would just be naive.

My usual response to the above mentioned question about Brad and Angelina is a polite smile and a quick diversion away from celebrities and back to the real reason I am called to Africa. Because I believe that people actually can make a difference, on their own, without the countless resources squandered by celebrities trying to one-up each other in their attempts at "generosity." And because I believe that the issues faced by Africa will still be important long after they are stylish.

I am a self-proclaimed shop-a-holic...I am not proud of it.

I can walk into a mall and spend hours upon hours, ambling from store to store, gazing longingly at displays propped up in windows, trying on enough outfits to clothe a small army, and searching for accessories to match. This would be fine if all I spent at the mall was hours, but it never is. No matter how I try to justify it, my shopping habit is an expensive one. My sister and I have always been partners in crime when it comes to shopping, and occasionally she will call me out on buying something completely impractical. She'll look at my selections skeptically and say "Don't you already have something just like that? Maybe even two somethings just like that?" I will consider this for a moment, then I will inevitably whine, "...but I neeeeeed it."

My perception of my own needs is obviously flawed.

This bit of self-reflection on my shopping addiction, er, habit has led me to think about the concept of human needs in general. People survive at varying positions on a wide spectrum of conditions and possessions, and their perceptions of their needs are inextricably linked with their position on this spectrum. On one end is the person who has everything under the sun, and imagines that they cannot survive without any of it, and on the other end is the person with zero material possessions who would likely have no idea what to do with all of these so-called necessities required by the first person.

Westerners, in general, exist on the end weighed down by lots and lots of stuff. We pride ourselves on owning the latest technology, biggest house, most expensive furniture, and in my case, the fullest closet. It gives me pause, however, to think of the other end of the spectrum, much lighter than the end I currently reside on, and how different it must be. I recently discussed this with a friend of mine who summed it up quite nicely in a quote by Buddha: "(s)he who is not happy with nothing will not be happy with everything."

We are so up to our eyeballs in our possessions, that we might be missing the big picture of what it actually takes to survive, and survive happily. Perhaps we are not reveling in our stuff, but drowning in it. In this light, it makes sense that the Western world is characterized by obesity, high stress levels, and the diseases associated with them. If we cannot learn to manage and be happy with a simple life, how can we be expected to manage our plethora of possessions?

While the Western world is burdened with too much wealth and too many possessions, the developing world is burdened with poverty and scarcity. While I am busy worrying about how on earth I can be expected to keep my closet organized, billions of people are stuck, literally in the dark because of the lack of electricity, wearing the same two or three articles of clothing day in and day out, because it is all they have. Westerners worry about losing weight, while citizens of developing countries are starving to death. I constantly whine that "I neeeeed" a new pair of shoes, while people suffer because they cannot get something that they actually do need, something as simple as clean water.

Joyce Mbwilo's life in Tanzania exemplifies the struggle to meet daily needs across the African continent. She tells of the difficulties she faces to send her children to school, and the 10 hour walk she must make, overnight, to bring water to her village. She is far from alone in these conditions, one in five people worldwide is estimated to have no access to clean water. She beseeches leaders of the G-8 to put themselves "in her shoes" to create policies that could help alleviate her exhausting situation. I wonder if it is even possible for someone who has to only turn on a tap to understand what it is like to commute for 10 hours for something as essential as water.

What strikes me while looking at these pictures is also how upbeat and positive she appears to be. She has much to be bitter about, but yet she smiles through the pictures and emphasizes the importance of a future for her children. If someone from a developed country is denied even the smallest luxury, I doubt that their attitude would be as optimistic. Have you ever witnessed what happens if you accidentally bump ahead of someone in line at a Starbucks? If people can't stand to wait an extra two minutes for their coffee, I doubt they would be smiling while carrying a heavy load of water.

Reading stories like Joyce's makes me feel ashamed. I don't see how I can justify or excuse my extravagant lifestyle while simultaneously claiming to be concerned about the fate of African citizens.

I think it is extremely important for people to evaluate, or in my case, re-evaluate what they actually need. We can't continue to stand idly by, with all of our stuff in tow, while ignoring the needs of fellow humans. I am not suggesting becoming a vagrant with no possessions, but perhaps next time you are in my position, about to make a superfluous purchase, take a moment to appreciate all the little luxuries you have...and then take a moment to think about how you can help someone without them.

My sister once posed the question, "What is important to you and how are you living it?" Africa, and the needs of its citizens are important to me - more important than my next shopping fix. I hope that wherever I end up with the Peace Corps will help me to start to live it.

The name "Osama bin Laden" strikes an emotional chord. For many Americans, including myself, this name conjures horrific images of 9/11 and stirs up feelings of anger and disgust. His attacks on the Western world have made his name and that of his terrorist organization, al Qaeda, infamous worldwide. Osama bin Laden has become a household name, topping the FBI's list of Most Wanted Terrorists.

With Osama bin Laden as THE face of terrorism, it is easy to see how terrorists like Joseph Kony have slipped through the cracks of international attention. However, after learning of his actions, his name becomes impossible to forget.

Joseph Kony and his organization, the Lord's Resistance Army, began their rebellion against the Ugandan government under President Yoweri Museveni in 1986. In the 20 years that have followed, the LRA has slaughtered more than 10,000 Ugandan citizens (some estimates range in the hundreds of thousands), has abducted more than 25,000 children to serve in its army, and has forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes. He is currently wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity, along with four of the other LRA leaders.

The LRA aims to implement a 10 Commandment style law to "cleanse" the people of Uganda. Kony considers himself to be a spiritual medium in this quest. In a recent interview with Sam Farmar, Kony states that "Yes, we are fighting for Ten Commandments...And that commandment was not given by Joseph. It was not given by LRA. No, that commandment was given by God."

Hypocrisy aside (last time I checked, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was still one of the commandments), the means Kony and his army have used to achieve his stated goal have been appalling. The vast majority of his army - estimates say more than 90% - is composed of children that have been taken from Northern Uganda, right out of their homes. Once the children are in the company of the LRA, those who resist are mutilated, dismembered, or killed. The girls are raped and many are kept as sex slaves. If a child survives the initial days of torture, they are forced to torture their peers in the same manner - even family members are not exempted from this and many children are forced to kill their own parents or siblings. Kony's strategy of kidnapping children is cruelly effective...it is easier for him to mold a child into a killer than an adult. He has conditioned his very own army of child soldiers to perform monstrous, unthinkable acts.

In a recent interview with the BBC, a man named Ocholo John told of his 11-day gut-wrenching experience with the LRA. He was verbally assaulted, beaten multiple times, and soldiers cut off his ears, nose, lips, and hands. He was left for dead, along with two women that he was abducted with, and survived only because they were discovered by government soldiers. He was my age when he was abducted. No amount of paraphrasing could do his account justice. Go to the site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm

Throughout the conflict, Joseph Kony has denied any wrongdoing and has refused to accept responsibility for abductions or deaths. He continues to blame the Ugandan government, still headed by President Museveni, for the ongoing violence. In 2002, he called in to a radio show in Gulu and claimed: "We are not abducting children. We are not doing anything bad in northern Uganda. All this dirty work is done by government, not LRA...I appeal to all of you who are tuned to this radio that I, Joseph Kony, am not involved in propaganda. I want everybody to live in peace and harmony. I want dialogue to end this war. But I also believe that the barrel of the gun can resolve the conflict..."

Where will it end?

President Museveni has made several attempts to negotiate with Kony, and yesterday, he made a controversial offer: "The Ugandan government will grant total amnesty despite the ICC indictments if he responds positively to the talks with the government in Juba, southern Sudan, and abandons terrorism." Despite everything he has done, to children, to adults, to fellow Ugandans, to people like Ocholo John, Kony will not face any punishment, and will walk free.

The Ugandan government has had an Amnesty Act in place since 1999 for the child soldiers who are lucky enough to escape from the LRA - it even offers them $150 in "starting over" funds. I fully support this act, as I do not think that children who are forcibly trained to kill should be prosecuted, but their abductor and trainer is a completely different story. When I heard the news of Museveni's offer, I was bewildered and outraged on behalf of everyone who has been impacted by Kony's heinous brand of terror.

While the thought of an amnesty for Kony leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, I have reluctantly reevaluated my thoughts after being persuaded by arguments from those who seek peace, like Betty Bigombe, the former minister for Uganda. She has requested to put a "premium on peace" and argues that no peace can exist in Uganda without the cooperation and disassembly of the LRA, and perhaps an amnesty for Kony might be a way to bring him to the negotiation table. As disgusting as it may be that he could get away with these countless atrocities, the complete failure of justice could be worth it if it will lead to peace for the people of Uganda.

Whether or not Kony accepts this offer, it is disturbing to me that the Ugandan government has been forced to resort to negotiating with terrorists in its attempt to guarantee safety for its people. Leaders of the Western world like George W. Bush and Tony Blair have staunchly maintained that negotiating with terrorists is not an option, and both the ICC and the US government have expressed disapproval for Museveni's amnesty offer.

Disapproval duly noted, but it is completely ineffective and useless in a practical sense. Museveni has repeatedly said that he would not consider offering amnesty if he had "reliable partners" in the region and worldwide who would help him to apprehend Kony and deal with the aftereffects of the LRA's terror. Still, the US has made little to no real effort to assist in Kony's capture. In 2004, Congress passed the Northern Uganda Crisis Response Act which consists of heavily shrouded language declaring support for peace in Uganda, but offers no real plan of action by the US. Efforts by the US end here, with this inutile act.

While al Qaeda has become a name frequently heard around the US, the name of the LRA, an equally horrific organization, draws blank stares. The LRA remains placed on tier two of the State Department's Terrorist Exclusion List, meaning that it is not considered to be a threat to US interests, and meaning that US policy for dealing with the LRA is practically non-existent. While the State Department offers a $25 million reward to anyone with information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, it offers no reward or incentive of any kind for information leading to the capture of Joseph Kony.

The US government has simultaneously declared a war on terror, and has ignored perpetrators of it. It simultaneously claims to be a moral leader, and deems the fate of Ugandan children as a non-issue. It simulteneously denounces Museveni's pledge of amnesty for Kony, and offers no assistance for an alternative plan. What kind of a message does this send?

Unfortunately, I hear the message, loud and clear, and it's one that is heard not just in Uganda, but across the African continent. Don't make me say it.

This is why I have found myself in support of Museveni's offer of an amnesty, as unjust as it may be for Kony's victims. Kony does deserve to be prosecuted, but without the hope of international help in his capture and prosecution, this idea is far-fetched. So is the idea of peace in Uganda with him on the loose. In the question of whether peace is worth an amnesty, I say absolutely.

However, there is another important question of whether or not an amnesty will necessarily lead to peace, and here I am completely unsure. I am hopeful that Museveni's tactic will work to stop the LRA's reign of terror and ensure safety for the horribly neglected children of Uganda, but there is no way of knowing what Joseph Kony will bring to the negotiation table, if he even decides to show up.

Negotiating with a terrorist like Joseph Kony is an act of desperation. It is also a blatant cry for help. With the loud cries of outrage at only terrorist organizations that directly affect Americans, will anyone be able to hear it?

In historical terms, a year may seem like just a small blip, but in individual terms, 365 days can really mean something. Think about where you were and what you were doing one year ago...now think about how much has happened and changed in your life in since then...kinda crazy, huh?

One year ago, I was at the United Nations attending daily briefings about various international issues and loving every single minute of it. This experience was one of the turning points for me in terms of discovering where my interests lie and what my life goals are, and I think I have made quite a bit of progress as far as paving the way to begin to fulfill these life goals. The time spent and effort put forth in this little 365-day historical blip can go a long way for one person.

One year ago marks not only a significant point in my life, but an important date for Africa as well. Last year on July 7, 2005, the G8 met in Gleneagles to discuss some of the issues facing global leaders. The most significant talking point that arose from these discussions was foreign aid. Each of the leaders agreed that poverty was a huge problem that must be stopped, and each leader seemed to attempt to one-up everyone else in their promises to eradicate it. All eight countries pledged to increase aid to the tune of some $50 billion to Africa and to cancel debt to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs).

The international community became caught up in the hype of these promises with the "Make Poverty History" campaign and the Live 8 concerts. Even ordinary citizens were aware of the negotiations taking place in Gleneagles, and with Bono and Madonna telling them that they need to be concerned about Africa, people responded. Everyone seemed to be on board and everyone seemed to believe that the G8 negotiations could be the catalyst for changing the fate of citizens of developing countries, particularly those of Africa. This would be, as Tony Blair declared, the "Year of Africa".

One whole year, dedicated to eradicating poverty in one continent, with the world's greatest powers calling the shots, and tons of money pouring into the countries. With all of this momentum behind them, the promises made at the G8 seemed to have the potential to make a difference.

Now, a year later, I am left wondering what on earth happened. What happened to increases of aid? What happened to debt cancellation? What happened to the overwhelming public support for Africa? What has happened in these 365 days to help African countries?

While the promises of the G8 have mostly slid under the radar, some might argue that there has been progress made. Raw data indicates that the G8 has increased official development aid by $21 billion, and on July 1, the World Bank will grant some $37 billion dollars in debt relief to 19 countries, 15 of which are in Africa. Increased aid and debt cancellation gives a country a great deal of resources that can now be used to build infrastructure and help improve the conditions of their citizens.

An old platitude comes to mind: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is..."

What typically is left out of these reports of the good news of increased aid and debt cancellation is that in order for countries to recieve it they have to jump over a series of economic hurdles called structural adjustment programs. These hurdles are typically designed by foreign economists who may have never even visited the country they are designing the policy for. I don't pretend to really understand economics, but from what I have learned about these SAPs, they are grandiose, idealistic plans that force countries to follow similar guidelines regardless of the countries' specific needs. They typically involve currency devaluation, a massive decrease in government spending (including spending for social welfare programs), and liberalizing the economy. A woman from Cameroon spoke to one of my classes about some of the negative effects that SAPs had on her country; currency devaluation pushed already poor citizens even farther into poverty, and lowering what little government subsidies existed had a detrimental effect on important industries. Her evaluation was that SAPs did more to hurt the citizens than to help the economy.

Further problems exist within these progress reports from the G8. The report of an increase in aid of $21 billion is what organizations like Oxfam call "double counting." This statistic is deceiving because it includes $14 billion and $5 billion in debt relief to Iraq and Nigeria, so actual amounts of aid did not increase by that much. Oxfam has also criticized the failure by the G8 to stay on target to increase aid as a percentage of GDP. The goals are to reach 0.56% of GDP by 2010 and 0.7% by 2015. Jo Leadbeater from the organization says "The G8's aid increase could save the lives of five million children by 2010, but 50 million children's lives will still be lost because the G8 didn't go as far as they should have done." What makes this comment even more depressing is that these five million children referred to will only be saved if the countries are on track with increasing aid, which unfortunately, is not happening.

The broken promises and political hype of the 2005 Summit have not even begun to scratch the surface of the problems. As much as I have played up what has failed to happen in just the past year, the root of the problem lies much deeper. The G8 is just one example of a global promise that has failed to make any significant difference. We are only one year out from the 2005 G8 Summit, but we are rapidly approaching the six year anniversary of the UN Millennium Summit and its Millennium Development Goals that hope to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015 - just 9 short years from now. I spent my summer at the UN researching these goals and was extremely disappointed by what little progress has been made six years out. If most African countries are not on target to reach the MDGs six full years after their inception, then how can they expect to implement programs to achieve the goals in nine years?

People tend to blame foreign aid for these failures. Over $500 billion has been poured into Africa in the past 40 years, and while the countries have struggled to pay back most of it, they are still deeply in debt. Aid that comes in is often used not to build up the economy, but to pay back existing debts. It seems counter-intuitive to me that the G8 and the UN continue to debate over how much more money to dump into African countries, and how much debt to cancel, with little attention given to how to keep countries out of debt. You can continue to pour water into a bucket, but if the bucket is full of holes (in the form of corruption, lack of infrastructure, stagnant economies, etc) the water will just go to waste.

Why don't we begin to use foreign aid to patch these holes?

The first hole that needs to be patched, I think, is debt. While it's true that developed countries have given huge amounts of money to Africa, this money has definitely not been used to promote African development. It is estimated that 40% of Africa's wealth lies overseas, much of it being used to line the Swiss bank accounts of former, and sometimes current, leaders. We cannot continue to punish African citizens by forcing countries to pay back debt that was incurred and squandered by corrupt leaders - this will only create a vicious cycle of more borrowing and repaying.

Once that hole is closed, foreign aid must be implemented systematically and differently in each country to patch the remaining holes. We can't just continue to throw money at the continent of Africa and then complain about how poor it still is. Rather than increasing foreign aid, why not focus on making foreign aid more effective? Jeffrey Sachs describes current foreign aid programs as "one-size-fits-all" and this is part of the reason why they are so ineffective. It does not seem to make sense to implement the same development programs in a country with severe drought problems as a country plagued by civil war. Foreign aid must be tailored to each country - the problems of Africa are multi-faceted and the solution must also be.

While it is true that real changes take time, I think that one full year out from a Summit as large as the G8, we should be able to see something concrete happening. If one little person like me can change so much in a year, what's to say that people in developing countries, if given the right resources, can also begin to see sustainable changes. The fact that there has been so little progress by now indicates that perhaps it's time to change our approach.

A year may not seem like a long time in history, but to the hundreds of thousands of people who have died in Africa in just one year, and the hundreds of thousands who will die in 2006, it is all the time in the world.

Don't say we need more time - a year of broken promises is a year too long.

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon and I, like many Americans, am lounging on my couch, sipping a cup of coffee and watching TV. Unlike most Americans, however, I am tuned in to C-SPAN. This is partially because I don't have cable, but also mostly because it really isn't bad to watch if you give it a chance. So anyway, they were broadcasting a speech made last Thursday about poverty by John Edwards to the National Press Club. While the speech focused mainly on poverty in America, he made reference to extreme poverty worldwide and America's leadership role, which is how I got hooked into watching it.

Typically when I watch American politicians, I am frustrated by the information that they choose not to mention and the empty rhetoric that is rarely, if ever, made into policy, but something was different about Edwards' speech. True, there was a lot missing from his speech by my standards, because if someone is talking about poverty and they only briefly mention Africa, then they have most definitely left something out, but in a speech that was meant to focus on American poverty, I was (sadly) impressed that he mentioned Africa at all.

Perhaps my veneration for this speech comes from the fact that I watch Edwards with a much less critical eye than other politicians because, really, I just love him. Maybe the whole "son of a mill worker" schtick actually worked on me...whatever the reason, I'd vote for him again in a heartbeat.

I don't want to dwell on this for too long because, obviously, the couple of minutes dedicated to international poverty did not contain too much actual substance in terms of how to fight against it, but I thought it deserved a nod in my blog because I got chills at one point. Honestly, real live goosebumps. And my apartment is like a sauna.

Check out the speech if you get a chance (for text go here: https://oneamericacommittee.com/news/speeches/20060622/). It reminded me a little of a domestic version of Jeffrey Sachs' last book (The End of Poverty), and that could be another reason why I really liked it. I must say, the book is a million times better than the speech and much more relevant to what I usually rant about, but if I were to blog about the book, I would be writing for the next several days straight. Rest assured it will be mentioned in future blogs...it's awesome...idealistic, but awesome.

I will end this random rave review of, let's face it, a speech full of rhetoric by a cute politician, with my favorite quote from the man himself:

"Poverty is the great moral issue of our time, and we all have an obligation to do something about it. Not just alleviate some of the symptoms…Not just find ways to help some of the people…But end it."

Preach on, Edwards, Preach on.

It seems that I can't turn on the news or pick up a newspaper lately without learning that, yet again, Joe Republican has accused Joe Democrat of attempting to "cut and run" in Iraq. From what I understand, the argument typically goes something like this -

Dem: we want troops home!

Rep: we can't just leave Iraq the way it is! mission not yet accomplished! you cutter and runner!

The recently reported 2500th death of an American soldier in Iraq no doubt fuels this debate and its incessant media coverage. It is indeed tragic that we have lost so many young people to a war that many of them didn't even want in the first place, and it breaks my heart to think of how many more lives will be lost before we will be able to leave Iraq.

While it is depressing to see new deaths reported every day, of both American citizens and Iraqis, I can't help but protest at the sheer amount of media coverage dedicated to this one specific issue and the political frenzy it has generated. As daunting of a figure as 40,000 deaths in Iraq so far is, (believe me, I am not trying to marginalize these sacrifices), it is even more daunting to me that newspapers could potentially be reporting more than 20,000 deaths in the developing world every single day.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone, it is estimated that 1,000 people die every day from the effects of a war that was officially declared "over" in 2003. In less than one decade, 3.9 million people have died in the DRC according to the International Rescue Committee. Nearly 4 million people - half the population of New York City - gone. Imagine the effects losing that many people would have on the US, not to mention how much media coverage and international attention it would get.

Although a cease-fire has remained in place in the Congo for almost four years, the region is far from stable. Armed militias still wreak havoc on villages, and civilians are often forced to flee their homes, where their fate is sealed by the unforgiving terrain and the impossible climate of the Congolese jungles. If they manage to survive their trek through the jungle, they often die later on of malnutrition or malaria, and other diseases they encounter along the way.

The government troops sent to protect them are difficult to distinguish from the rebels, and are often accused of robbing the villages and raping its citizens. My professor last semester, Michael Schatzberg (who also happens to be one of my personal heroes) described this relationship in a simple question: "if there are two people who are starving, and one of them happens to have some food, and the other one happens to have a gun, who do you think will get to eat?" The UN, in an attempt to curb these effects, has stationed more peacekeepers in the DRC than in any other country, some 17,000 troops, but try to imagine just 17,000 troops patrolling an area the size of almost half of the United States. It's chaos. NGOs and humanitarian organizations do what they can, but in areas without an effective government or any type of infrastructure, it is difficult to implement humanitarian aid.

It's ironic to me that US policymakers are embroiled in debates over "cutting and running" while all of this is going on in the Congo. Many of Africa's poverty problems can be traced back to the cutting and running that occurred by most colonial powers immediately following independence...then cutting and running by the US and Soviets again just 15 years ago at the end of the Cold War. The Congo is a perfect example.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the current abysmal state of Congolese citizens, not the least of which goes to King Leopold II, and Belgium, and of course, the trusty US government. After the first leader of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was democratically elected by its citizens, the CIA assisted in his assassination in one of its many irrational strategies arising as an outgrowth of containment. In a blatantly political move to thwart the Soviets' simultaneous struggle for African support in the Cold War, the US helped to appoint President Joseph Mobutu, (aka: Mobutu Sese Seko) who agreed to align himself with the West. Surprise, surprise, Mobutu did not turn out to be the fearless democratic leader the US had portrayed him as. He plundered every bit of wealth he could from the country for his own personal gain until the first Congo Civil War began in 1996 - more than 30 years later. This led right into the Second Congo Civil War in 1998 that the country is still trying, unsuccessfully, to recover from.

Because they had such an important hand in securing Mobutu's rule, the US government was extremely concerned about his corrupt mishandling of the Congo, right? The US would never have appointed such a horrible autocrat and just continued to feed him money to keep him in power...right? Wrong on both counts. Not only did the US help to keep Mobutu in power throughout this 30 year period, completely disregarding the condition of Congolese citizens, but as soon as the end of the Cold War rolled around, the US seemed to forget that Mobutu and the DRC existed. Spreading Western democracy, or more accurately, aborting efforts to spread communism, was no longer the policy du jour, and the Congo no longer held any strategic significance. The US was just not interested anymore. Game over.

Sound like cutting and running to you, too?

So if we are even partially responsible, then where are the debates? Where is Joe Republican, or Joe Democrat for that matter, when it comes to the current state of the Congo?

I will be interested to see whether or not the international community will lend a hand on July 30th when the Congo is scheduled to hold presidential elections. According to a Congolese survey by the UN Regional Integration Network, Joseph Kabila, the current president, is favored to win because "Kabila has the money, so he will win."

There's democracy at work for you.

So far, there are scheduled to be 250 EU troops to monitor the elections. Compare that with the 23,000 monitors sent by various NGOs for the Iraqi elections. Many are skeptical that the elections will even take place. I am inclined to agree with them.

However, if the international community can take one eye off of Iraq for just a moment and perhaps turn it towards the DRC, and maybe (gasp), even attempt to do something to help, prospects could be better...I think it's worth a try.